Why sitting at your desk could be bad for your health

A new study has shown that sitting at your desk all day could be doing you harm. Catherine Scott reports.

Do you spend a lot of your working day sitting at a desk? Did you know you could be putting your health at risk?

It is estimated that most employees spend more than half their day sitting down, but many don’t know it could be causing them harm. A recent study has found that prolonged sitting could lead to serious health problems such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

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Leeds Beckett University has looked into whether people are aware of the risks.

The study, which was led by Dr Stuart Flint in the Carnegie School of Sport, looked at employees’ sitting behaviour in the workplace and spoke to groups of employees about how they felt their sitting for long periods at work might affect their health.

“One of the issues we found while carrying out our research is that, in a business-driven workplace, the feasibility of reducing employee sitting time yet maintaining work productivity is a key challenge. Participants reported that light-intensity activities such as walking to meeting rooms, taking standard breaks from sitting, stand-up meetings and walking at lunchtimes were more realistic and preferable than trying to engage in moderate to vigorous activity in the workplace,” says Dr Flint

“Personal determinants, the workplace environment and organisational culture are key to reducing employees’ sitting time.

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“Future workplace interventions should consider the corporate and organisational culture as it is this which impacts greatly on employee’s willingness to adopt healthier behaviours at work.”

This is the first UK examination of employee perceptions of prolonged sitting in the workplace. The results showed that all participants perceived that prolonged sitting time was associated with poorer health and well-being at work but, when asked what problems it caused, came up with examples including back and neck pain, dry eyes, poor posture, weight gain, fatigue and reduced concentration.

Dr Flint is a psychologist with a specific interest in psychosocial effects of obesity; in particular obesity stigmatisation and discrimination, conscious and unconscious attitudes, body image, attitude and behaviour change and factors that influence exercise participation.

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