Although there are still jobs that require a lot physical activity, more and more occupations mostly consist of eight hours a day spent in an office chair. This is of course the way passive lifestyle and can have very negative health effects. For this reason, there are more and more campaigns aimed at raising awareness of these workers what they do some exercise daily. This is definitely a good decision. However, according to a recently published study by scientists from Columbia Universityit is also important to minimize the hours a worker sits without rest.
To do this, they usually recommend what is known as snacks. Come on, instead of getting up for a coffee or snack machine, they do it for a little walk or some other physical exercise. There are several exercises designed to analyze the effects of these snacks. However, several options are not usually compared.
That’s why this new study, which was published in Medicine and science in sports and exercise. It compares different options in which the time and distance of the exercise vary. Finally, it is concluded that optimally walk for 5 minutes every half hour. It may seem tedious, but the truth is that it even managed to cheer up the participants.
The Best Exercises for Office Workers
This study included 11 people with no pre-existing health problems, with age from 40 to 60 years. All of them had to spend eight hours sitting in an ergonomic chair similar to those used by office workers.
At that time, they could read, look at their mobile phone or use a computer. However, during this time they had to four types of recreation. walk from one minute every 30 or 60 minutesor walk five minutes every 30 or 60 minutes. In any case, this exercise was done on a treadmill, but it could be replaced by a walk.
Periodic measurements were taken to see how this affected his health. blood sugar and blood pressure, as both are very good markers of cardiometabolic health. So, it was noticed that the best results were obtained with five-minute walks every half hour. In fact, it reduced spikes in sugar in food. by 58% blood pressure decreased by 4-5 mm Hg. Walking for 1 minute every half hour also led to an improvement in these indicators, although not as significant. On the other hand, if workers snacked on exercise every hour, there would be little benefit.
fast results
The improvements obtained were comparable to exercise daily for six months. So while exercising after hours is highly recommended, you can get very good results in less time with these curious snacks.
However, since it is somewhat unconventional, which can be annoying, it was also appreciated. mood, fatigue and cognition participants during the test. Thus, it was seen that in all cases, except for walking every minute every hour, mood improved and fatigue decreased. All of them are advantages.
The next step for these scientists will be to repeat the experiment with more participants, with more different ages and different health conditions. For example, it would be interesting to see how it would affect those who already have cardio-metabolic health issues. In addition, they plan to test over 20 different combinations, for the perfect snack during your workout. Times are changing and workers are spending more and more time sitting, but we must not succumb to a sedentary lifestyle. There are solutions, now it remains only to find the best.
Source: Hiper Textual
