0:01

BBC Sounds Music Radio

0:03

Podcasts Stand up

0:06

if you think 1343 is great. I

0:10

love standing up all the time because it's

0:13

good for your soul, your

0:15

body and your mind. Wow.

0:16

Do you get bored if you sit down too long?

0:19

You don't have anything to do

0:21

and you can't like

0:23

be free outside.

0:29

Well

0:31

my dad works at home so he

0:33

mostly sits and goes on his laptop. My

0:38

dad works at home too so I have

0:40

to drag him around most of the

0:42

time to make him get better.

0:45

Dads are like that. What would you say to somebody

0:47

who sat at home, sat on their sofa,

0:49

hasn't got up all day?

0:50

I would just tell them that it's healthy to get

0:53

out of the house and to get some more fresh

0:55

air and exercise. I would be

0:57

like

0:58

get up now, get

1:00

out of the house, shove him out

1:02

of the house, lock him out. You're

1:04

like really bossy. Not really but

1:06

that's what I would do if he asked me

1:08

who I'm with. So all together, standing

1:11

good or bad?

1:12

It's good. It's very fun.

1:19

Those children are really thinking about how much time

1:21

they spend sitting versus standing up

1:23

and being nice and active. We're

1:25

going to meet them properly later on

1:27

in Inside Health but I think we should have

1:30

a little bit of a moment ourselves and think

1:32

about how much time we spend sitting down.

1:35

Because if I'm completely honest, it's

1:37

a lot. So I get the train to and

1:39

from work in the morning and then I sit at a desk

1:41

all day. Then if it's been a really tiring

1:44

day then I probably do just sit in front of

1:46

the television in the evening as well. So add

1:48

that together and you've probably got hours and hours

1:50

and hours of sitting. So

1:52

what we're going to try and find out this week is

1:54

how much sitting is too much.

1:57

When has it become dangerous for our health? So

1:59

to start us off... I've come to Leicester General

2:02

Hospital. Let's go inside. Hi

2:04

James, I'm Professor Charlotte Edwardson.

2:07

Welcome to our lab at the Leicester lifestyle and health

2:09

research group. Charlotte, thanks so much for having me in. No

2:11

problem at all. So just start off by

2:14

mulling, why is it that we care about sitting?

2:16

If we think

2:17

about our daily activities, a lot of

2:19

activities are done sitting down. Movement in our

2:21

everyday lives has really been engineered out with advances

2:23

in technology and our bodies just weren't

2:25

designed to sit this much, so it's going to cause problems

2:28

with our health.

2:28

But are our brains designed to really enjoy

2:30

sitting? Because like so much of what

2:32

we do is like, you know

2:34

what I mean, like when you've had a busy day at work,

2:37

what do you want to do? You want to just crash in front of

2:39

the television or something? It is very relaxing

2:41

and we're not saying that you shouldn't

2:43

sit, you should spend some of your time sitting.

2:45

It's just when you do

2:46

too much of it that's the problem. Okay, so today

2:48

we're going to find out when it transitions from

2:50

being alright to not

2:53

so good. Well, hopefully I can answer that question for

2:55

you. I'm quite nervous because you made

2:57

me wear an activity monitor for a week and

2:59

it was quite a sophisticated one, wasn't it? You could tell whether I was

3:01

walking, standing, sitting, sleeping.

3:04

Do you want to tell me what you found? Yeah,

3:06

so the results from the accelerometer

3:07

found that you spend on average 9.2

3:10

hours a day sitting down.

3:11

That a lot? On

3:13

average adults spend around 9 hours a day sitting,

3:15

so about 60% of their waking hours.

3:17

So you're very similar to the population.

3:19

James average. Average, you're

3:22

an average person for your sitting time. Well,

3:24

some populations sit for 10, 11, 12 hours

3:27

if they work at desks or they've

3:28

got chronic long-term health conditions. I

3:30

can see the graph staring at me. There's quite

3:32

a lot of red. I assume red is bad.

3:34

So I've plotted your data minute by

3:37

minute and colour coded it. So all of

3:39

your red data that you see on the screen is your

3:41

sitting time, all of the yellow is standing

3:43

time and all of the green is the time that you spent

3:45

moving around.

3:46

So Charlotte, what did you learn about me? Be brutal,

3:48

be honest.

3:49

So I learnt that your Mondays are

3:51

really quite active. Your Monday looks very different

3:54

to your Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday,

3:56

which were a lot more sedentary.

3:57

Interesting. Monday is the day I normally

3:59

take off.

4:00

and then have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday in the

4:02

office.

4:02

Saturday looks quite active. There's quite a lot of

4:04

standing and moving around on the Saturday. Sunday,

4:07

your day of relaxation. There's a lot more

4:10

sitting on the Sunday, so 12 hours of sitting

4:12

on the Sunday.

4:12

Okay,

4:15

I don't entirely remember what happened on Sunday. Maybe

4:17

it was raining a lot outside, I don't know. Can

4:21

you figure out the half hour bike ride that

4:23

I did one evening? Oh, for a

4:26

lot. Wednesday.

4:28

Yeah, I spent all day trying. So

4:32

you were guilty of doing something like that. It wasn't

4:34

guilty, it was like my body was demanding

4:36

to do something. I also had

4:38

a look at the time you spent in your prolonged sitting. So

4:41

in terms of prolonged sitting, we classify

4:42

that as bouts of 30 minutes

4:44

or more without getting up. So 55% of

4:47

your total sitting time was accumulated

4:50

in these

4:50

prolonged, unbroken bouts. What was

4:52

my worst?

4:53

So your worst was on the Tuesday, so you got

4:55

a three hour chunk there of at least

4:57

three hours where you haven't got up or moved

4:59

around. And you've got some two hour blocks

5:01

as well on the Wednesday and the Thursday as

5:03

well. At the same time, Charlotte, you made

5:05

me guess how much time I had

5:08

spent the day

5:09

sitting, was I close? On the days

5:12

you were actually, you

5:12

were quite accurate on a few of the days. But

5:14

on some of the other days, you actually overestimated

5:17

the amount of time you spent sitting, which was quite a surprise

5:19

because when we ask our research participants, they tend to underestimate

5:21

by a couple of hours. Okay,

5:23

I ended it with brutal pessimism,

5:25

guys. He says that's

5:27

when the whole of this day sat down. Let's

5:30

go into the lab and then we'll talk a little bit

5:32

more about what happens in the body when we do sit down.

5:36

Charlotte, your laboratory

5:38

is a row of, it's basically a gym, isn't

5:40

it? Because you've got row of treadmills, some exercise

5:43

bites, weight machines. We're

5:45

talking about sitting, this seems far too active. What's

5:47

going on?

5:47

It does, but actually, if you look behind you, this

5:50

is what we call our sitting fishbowl. So

5:52

this is where we do a lot of our sitting experiments

5:54

where we make people sit down all day and look at the impact on their health.

5:57

What is the big difference between sitting and

5:59

being active? So when you sit down,

6:01

you're not using the largest muscles in your

6:03

body, so these are the ones in your legs and your bum.

6:06

So that means that your muscle activity goes

6:08

down. When your muscle activity goes down,

6:11

your blood circulation reduces. That

6:13

in turn slows your metabolic system. So

6:16

when that happens, the amount of energy

6:18

that your body uses goes down. You

6:21

have high levels of glucose in your blood, high

6:23

levels of insulin, high levels of fats in your

6:25

blood. And then over the longer term,

6:27

this can lead to a decrease in muscle

6:30

strength, bone mineral density and then

6:32

have dysfunction of the arteries and blood vessels

6:34

as well.

6:34

Okay, so the less you talk about my 12 hours, the less

6:37

you do better. What do you want me to do today?

6:39

So I mentioned there that when

6:41

you sit down, you use less energy. So we're

6:43

going to put that to the test. So I'm going to ask you

6:45

to do five minutes of sitting, five

6:48

minutes of standing, five minutes of just pottering

6:50

around our lab, five minutes of simple

6:53

body weight resistance activities to

6:55

see how little energy your body

6:58

burns when you sit versus when you do some more of

7:00

these light activities. Okay, so

7:02

we're going to get you to wear the face mask.

7:04

And you're going to measure how much carbon dioxide

7:06

I'm blowing

7:07

off. Exactly. Yeah. So

7:09

we're going to measure how much oxygen is being used, how much carbon dioxide is being released

7:11

by the body. And from that, we can calculate how much

7:13

energy your body is using. Okay,

7:16

so the first thing we need to do is get you fitted with our masks.

7:18

So this is going straight

7:21

over my mouth. Yep. So we're going to

7:23

get our straps

7:23

that go over your head and clip on to the other side.

7:26

Right, so you look set, ready to

7:28

start some of our activities. So nice

7:30

and easy one to begin with. We're going to get you to

7:32

sit down on a chair for five minutes as

7:34

if you were just sitting at your desk.

7:37

Okay. If I start falling

7:39

asleep. We're going to move on to your next activity.

7:48

You're

7:50

really tired from sitting down for that five minutes. Right,

7:57

so the next activity I'm going to get you to do is stand.

7:59

at our standing desk.

8:01

If you stand here for five

8:03

minutes we're going to start our test.

8:15

Okay James we're going to move on

8:17

to the light walking activity so we're just going

8:19

to get you to putter up and down our lab at whatever

8:21

pace you want to do so and nice slow

8:24

walk.

8:34

Right so we're going to move on to the next activity.

8:36

I'm going to get you to do a little circuit

8:38

of body weight exercises. So I'm

8:40

going to ask you to do some body weight squats,

8:44

some calf raises and then some knee

8:46

raises.

8:47

So these are the type of exercises that you can just

8:49

do whilst you're waiting for the kettle to boil.

9:00

Okay that's the end of the five minutes. Do

9:02

you

9:02

want to take a seat? I would like to take a seat if

9:04

I'm in. So do you think you could do some of

9:06

those activities whilst you're waiting for the kettle to boil?

9:08

Yeah but like I said I'm really worried about how long your kettle

9:11

took before. That was a long boil.

9:13

Okay you'll be pleased to know that's all your test

9:15

done.

9:16

So Charlotte while you go crunch the

9:18

numbers I'll leave you to it while we explore

9:21

the origins of this whole idea of sitting

9:23

being bad for our health. But

9:26

first I've been to the bus station in Leicester

9:28

to find out how long you sit for. I

9:30

retired November and I was determined now why

9:32

it goes this every day. So I go three walking

9:35

clubs, I keep fit, I

9:37

think I do okay. It's easier to just

9:40

sit on your bum. When I'm not sitting I try

9:42

to be active. Three-ish hours? Just

9:44

three hours. Yeah well I just

9:46

go to pastry school,

9:47

I'm standing up like six hours a day

9:49

and I work on the weekends as well so that's

9:51

all standing up. Well I don't really sit

9:53

down until I get home. Well the only

9:55

time I sit down now is on the bus because I dance

9:58

all day every day.

9:59

Okay, I found the two most active

10:02

people in the country. Yeah, sorry. Probably

10:06

about four hours maximum.

10:08

I don't get time to sit. Before you had a two year old?

10:11

I used to work like 12 hours shifts a day. So

10:14

your job keeps you on your feet. And now

10:16

a two year old keeps you on your feet. Yep, even more so. A two

10:18

year old that definitely won't touch that much.

10:25

My name is Professor Stacey Clemerson. I'm

10:27

Professor of Active Living and Public Health at

10:30

Upfield. Stacey, why

10:32

have you arranged for us to meet at the

10:34

bus station in Lesley? Because most

10:36

of our understanding

10:37

today on the links between

10:39

physical activity and health really originated

10:42

from research done with bus

10:44

drivers and bus conductors back in the 1950s.

10:47

As to the classic experiment, one person sits

10:49

all day, one person is on their feet going up and

10:51

down stairs all day. So

10:53

Professor Jeremy Morris did a landmark

10:56

study back in the 1950s looking

10:58

at bus drivers and bus conductors. The

11:01

cost of bus conductors were on their feet all day going

11:03

up and down between the necks,

11:04

collecting money. And the

11:06

bus drivers, as we know, spent all their time sitting.

11:09

And Jeremy Morris and colleagues found that

11:11

the bus drivers had a much higher

11:14

rate of heart with these in comparison

11:16

to the cost of conductors. Is it that being

11:18

active or being sedentary, the

11:21

difference? Or is it both? That's

11:23

a really, really good question

11:24

and I think that stuck for quite a

11:26

lot of debate nowadays. So

11:29

back when these findings originated,

11:31

the study is known as the landmark study that shaped

11:33

our knowledge about the links between activity and health.

11:36

But you could argue nowadays that actually the

11:39

first elements are also shattered. Large

11:42

volumes of sitting are also bad for our health. I

11:44

think this changes. The bus drivers are still there but the

11:46

conductors are gone. They've made it less healthy.

11:49

Yeah, exactly. So we've no longer got these

11:51

kind of healthier conductors because of course

11:53

now the drivers do everything.

11:54

Have you failed to learn the health lessons

11:56

of those studies?

11:58

We have had a whole pack of us research.

11:59

over the last 10 years or so, looking at people

12:02

who I describe who have compulsory

12:04

sedentary occupation. So these are people in driving...

12:06

You have no choice. And are they the

12:08

worst jobs in terms of sitting when you do the studies?

12:11

I mean are they the ones that you worry about? The sitting times

12:13

are probably damaging to hell.

12:14

Definitely. We've compared a whole

12:16

host of different occupational groups and we've actually

12:18

found that sitting times in lorry drivers

12:21

are the worst. How

12:22

much worse? They are sitting

12:24

across the whole day for over 12 hours

12:26

a day. Your typical office worker

12:29

will be sitting probably about 10 hours a day,

12:31

plus drivers about 11 hours.

12:32

Is there much you can do about that?

12:34

We have developed a program

12:37

looking at trying to promote more

12:39

activity in drivers, reduce their sitting

12:41

time, improve their diet. And

12:43

we have found that this program

12:46

has been quite effective, albeit

12:48

during their non-working hours.

12:50

I think that the job is still the

12:52

job. It's very difficult to tackle that. If

12:54

you've got to do a six hour drive and

12:57

then that one moment where you do get a pause, the

12:59

first thing on your mind is probably not, oh better

13:01

do some squats or something. Probably need the toilet

13:04

or I need to get something to eat.

13:06

Exactly. I mean one thing we have created

13:08

for drivers as part of our program is

13:10

a little cab workout. While

13:12

you're

13:12

driving. Not while you're driving. I have to

13:14

say not while you're driving. You worry me for a minute Stacey.

13:18

No. One thing that we use are

13:20

some resistance bands. That's a stretchy

13:22

last three foot stuff. Yeah.

13:23

And one simple activity drivers

13:26

could do for example is pop the band

13:28

beneath their feet and then do some

13:30

simple bicep curls with the band. It's

13:33

a really good way of, we

13:35

say breaking up your sitting time, you're still seated at

13:37

this point. But

13:38

the muscular movement, the muscular

13:40

activity is increasing

13:41

your metabolic rate. So that

13:43

original study in bus drivers and

13:45

cadutors was 70 years ago. Yes.

13:48

And in that 70 years things have

13:50

definitely got worse. We spent a whole lot more

13:52

time sitting. You've seen the Pixar film

13:54

Wally. Is that what we're

13:57

heading for? Just like everybody in like their own little

13:59

hover chair. with a giant kind of

14:01

busy drink on the go watching a screen the

14:03

whole time.

14:04

That is a big concern of mine and to

14:06

be healthy you have to really make

14:09

a little effort to embed kind of healthy

14:11

behaviours within your your lifestyle.

14:12

They said it sounds like hard work but

14:14

thanks for coming to chat. No problem.

14:19

Well you're listening to Inside

14:21

Health and we're still in the laboratory

14:24

slash gym exploring what

14:26

sitting does to our health

14:28

and we're here with Professor Charlotte Edgerton and

14:30

you've been analysing my series

14:33

of five minute experiments. What

14:35

are the results? Yeah

14:36

so we found that during the five

14:38

minutes of standing your body used 20% more

14:41

energy than when you were just sitting

14:43

down. When you were walking and pottering

14:45

around our lab your body used 92% more

14:48

energy and that was quite a light walk. When

14:50

you did the body weight exercises so

14:52

we did our squats and our calf raises and knee

14:54

raises your body burnt 105% more energy

14:56

than when you were sitting

14:59

down doing those exercises.

15:00

So that tells us that your

15:02

body uses a lot less energy

15:04

when you're just sitting down.

15:05

And I suppose it's not just

15:08

calories burnt is it? It's the difference

15:10

between sitting and

15:12

standing. I mean we couldn't be here for the whole

15:14

eight hour, ten hour experiment to figure out what

15:16

prolonged sitting does but it has

15:19

much wider impacts in the body doesn't

15:20

it? So yes if you were to spend six to seven

15:23

hours in our lab we'd see that your

15:25

glucose levels would go up, your insulin

15:27

levels will go up, your blood pressure would go up.

15:29

So basically your body processes slow

15:31

down when you're sitting. Over the long term

15:34

that's been linked to type 2

15:36

diabetes, cardiovascular disease and

15:38

dying early and there's now some evidence

15:40

to suggest that high levels of sitting

15:43

are linked to poor mental health as well. So for example

15:45

anxiety and depression. How big

15:48

a risk are they? Are they ones we should be worried

15:50

about?

15:50

Yeah so there's evidence now to show that high

15:52

levels of sitting are associated with double

15:54

the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and

15:57

then for things like cardiovascular disease or

15:59

dying early there are

15:59

risks are increased by around 10 to 30%.

16:02

So you think that's notable? Yes, double

16:05

the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Yes,

16:07

certainly. So how do you feel about headlines that go, sitting,

16:10

it's as bad as smoking?

16:11

So I've heard many times that sitting is the new smoking,

16:13

but it's really not, these behaviours are not comparable.

16:16

The risk associated with smoking are four,

16:19

five times the level that they are for

16:21

sitting.

16:21

So who's most of the risk?

16:23

We found that females,

16:26

South Asian individuals, those with

16:28

a higher weight and those who are unfit, have

16:30

a worse metabolic response to the prolonged

16:32

sitting than their counterparts. But actually

16:35

then on the flip side, when they regularly break

16:37

up their sitting time, they benefit more.

16:38

They've got the most to gain. Yes, exactly.

16:46

Can you compensate for the risk of sitting

16:49

a lot if you just try to do really

16:52

intense bits of exercise, say just for the weekend?

16:54

If you do 60 to 75 minutes of moderate to

16:56

vigorous physical activity per day,

16:59

then it doesn't matter how much you sit. Now

17:01

a lot of people can't achieve that, but if you

17:03

can do- I don't know anybody who can achieve that, but

17:05

yeah. No,

17:06

but if you can do something, then

17:08

it will start to lower your risk if you

17:10

sit for high levels of time. Is

17:12

there a difference between someone who sits

17:14

for nine hours a day in one

17:17

long go and is active the whole of the rest

17:19

of the time versus somebody who has

17:21

nine, one hour spells of sitting and is active

17:24

in between?

17:24

So evidence in our lab compared

17:26

one batch of exercise of sitting and down all day

17:28

in comparison to regularly breaking up a sit time.

17:31

Every 30 minutes, for example, with just a few minutes

17:33

of activity. And these have shown that both will benefit

17:35

health, but actually having the regular

17:37

breaks throughout the day, you will get slightly

17:40

greater benefits in terms of glucose,

17:41

for example, from doing that. But Charlotte,

17:43

what about people who wait for constant or

17:45

just constant for very long periods of time?

17:48

Yeah, so it's about interrupting

17:50

that sitting time with any form of movement

17:52

that we're able to do. We've shown

17:54

in our lab studies that when you regularly

17:56

break up your sitting time, every 30 minutes with

17:58

just a few minutes of... arm ergometry, so

18:01

arm ergometry is basically doing cycling

18:03

action with your arms. You can still reduce

18:05

things like your glucose and your insulin levels

18:08

quite significantly.

18:08

How well do

18:10

we know that sitting itself

18:13

is bad for health?

18:14

A lot of the evidence that we have is observational.

18:17

So observational research can only

18:20

look at associations between

18:22

risk factors, so associations between sitting

18:24

and tattoo diabetes, for example. Ideally

18:27

what we'd like to do is get people just to sit

18:29

down more and then look at the impact on their health,

18:31

you know, 5, 10, 15 years

18:33

later, but we can't do that, that's unethical. So

18:35

what we do is we design sitting reduction

18:37

interventions for people and try to

18:40

encourage them to reduce their sitting time and then follow

18:42

them up after a year, for example, and compare

18:44

them to a control

18:45

group. And what does that show?

18:46

We can reduce sitting time by around 60

18:49

to 80 minutes a day. They've reported benefits

18:52

such as reductions in stress levels, improvements

18:54

in wellbeing, less things like

18:56

back pain. They felt more energised,

18:58

they felt more productive and more engaged

19:00

with their work.

19:01

At the other end of the spectrum, you can stand

19:03

too much and I've been finding out about that too. Take

19:06

a listen to this. Hello, my name is

19:08

Andreas Hauteman. I'm a professor in

19:10

occupational health and I'm working at

19:12

the National Research Centre for the Work Environment

19:15

in Copenhagen Denmark.

19:16

So Andreas, welcome to Inside Health. Thank

19:18

you. And we have spent a fair

19:21

bit of time chatting through

19:23

sitting and what it does for our health. Is

19:26

the opposite true? Is too much standing a

19:28

bad thing?

19:29

Oh, that's a great question. I think in general

19:31

that our bodies this time to

19:33

do all kinds of activities,

19:36

sitting, standing and moving around. Of

19:38

course, it can be too much. Why

19:40

is standing potentially bad? If

19:42

you're standing for many hours, then

19:45

it might be more and more

19:47

of the blood remaining in the

19:49

legs and it might be harder and

19:51

harder for the heart to pump this

19:54

around. But Andreas, if our

19:56

heart has to work a little bit harder, our muscles

19:58

have to work a little bit harder

19:59

if we're standing.

19:59

up for a long period of time, that just sounds

20:02

like exercise and would be something that's good for

20:04

the body. The point is that you don't get

20:06

all the beneficial effects

20:09

from standing as you get from walking,

20:12

brisk walking or vigorous physical activity.

20:14

You don't get your heart rate really up so

20:17

it improves your fitness levels, it

20:19

doesn't really burn a lot of colours.

20:22

Standing might be a problem if you don't have the

20:24

possibility to sit. And for this

20:26

reason is that you can get edema so

20:28

you have more and more venous pooling,

20:31

so blood in your legs which doesn't

20:33

get pumped around. And this pooling can

20:36

be bad for various

20:38

ways, it can be bad for

20:40

your muscles' little pain and it can

20:42

also cause increased blood pressure.

20:45

How much evidence do we have on the health

20:47

consequences of too much standing?

20:50

We have very, very little evidence

20:53

on standing. If there's only a limited amount

20:55

of evidence, are we in a position where we can actually

20:58

say, this is how much standing

21:00

you should do in a day or how much you should stand

21:03

still for before you need a break?

21:05

In general, our bodies are

21:07

a magnificent tool. It

21:09

tells us in principle what is

21:12

best for us. But of course, it is

21:14

also deeply in us, in

21:16

building us, that we should use as little

21:18

energy as possible, which is in general the

21:21

problem, right? But with respect to

21:23

standing, I think most of us, right, if you

21:25

have a stand desk, you feel

21:28

when you have been standing sufficient amount of time,

21:30

right? So I think in general

21:33

it is to listen to your body and what

21:35

feels good. German advice, rather

21:38

than German occupational health, institute saying the

21:40

best thing could be to sit 60% of the

21:42

time, stand 30% of the time and be active

21:45

10% of the time. I'd

21:47

have to live my entire life with a stopwatch in order to figure

21:50

that one out. And I suppose the

21:52

other thing this just highlights me, like we started

21:54

off talking about sitting and how too much sitting

21:57

is bad for your health. And then we start talking about, well, actually

21:59

too much standing is bad for your health. It's sometimes going to be

22:01

really difficult to really figure out what is the best thing

22:03

to do.

22:04

Yeah, and I think I think we should focus

22:07

much more about how

22:08

how can we promote and

22:11

build societies and jobs

22:13

and schools which promote a

22:16

healthy living and we need to have this

22:18

good balance. Andreas, do you have a book

22:20

coming out called the 60 30 10 rule for life? Yeah,

22:24

we call it the sweet spot. Thanks

22:27

so much for talking.

22:35

So back in the lab with Professor Charlotte

22:38

Edwardson, I like

22:40

a magic number. Is there a magic

22:42

number for the point at

22:44

which we should be worried about how much sitting

22:46

we're doing? Well, there are a couple

22:48

of studies that have attempted

22:50

to put a threshold on how much sitting is

22:52

too much. So in 2019,

22:55

a large met analysis was done. So a meta

22:57

analysis is a study that groups together

23:00

all studies that have looked at the same thing to come up

23:02

with one overall concluding result. So

23:04

this meta analysis found that the risks

23:07

of dying early increase gradually

23:09

from seven and a half hours a day to nine hours

23:11

and then increase more steeply from nine

23:14

and a half hours upwards. And

23:16

just to give you an idea of how big those risks

23:18

are, if you sit for eight hours, your

23:20

risk of dying early is 4% higher

23:22

than someone who sits for seven and a half hours. If

23:25

you sit for nine hours, it's 15% higher. If you sit for 10

23:28

hours, 48% higher. If you sit for 12 hours a day, it's 192% higher than

23:31

someone who

23:35

sits for seven and a half

23:36

hours. That really takes off quite quickly

23:39

once you get the other five hours, nine hours. And nine

23:41

hours is pretty much spot on where I was.

23:45

And with the other. Yes, exactly. Charlotte, we have

23:47

really specific advice when it comes

23:49

to how physically active we should be and

23:51

kind of like how much running or swimming or

23:53

cycling we should do. We don't really

23:56

have the mirror image of that, do we? We don't have a number

23:58

that says like, you know, someone with a pointy

24:00

finger, do not sit for more than

24:02

nine hours a day. We don't have that equipment advice,

24:05

do we?

24:05

Those guidelines are based on 50, 60, 70 years

24:08

of research, but for our research around the impact

24:11

of sitting on health, actually it really

24:13

only started in the last two decades.

24:15

So we just need more research to be confident

24:17

on putting an exact

24:18

threshold. How much do you feel like

24:20

you're just swimming into tide with all of this? Like

24:22

the whole of society is like driving us

24:24

more and more towards, you know, sitting

24:27

down all the time. And you're like, please don't.

24:30

Sitting is so much part of our

24:33

everyday activities. You know,

24:35

you go into meetings and say, come

24:37

and take a seat. You go into your GP surgery, come

24:39

and take a seat. Everything's geared around

24:42

sitting and as technology advances and

24:44

it tries to make our life easier, it then leads

24:47

to a sitting even more.

24:47

How often do you have a day like my Sunday,

24:50

which just has like 12 hours of sitting?

24:52

Yeah, of course I'm going to have those long days

24:54

of sitting, but I just make

24:56

sure that they're not too frequent. You're

24:58

making them feel less guilty. This is good.

25:00

This is good. What's the one thing you don't want someone to take

25:02

away from this programme we've made, Charlotte?

25:05

So the messages that we try to promote in

25:07

our studies are to try and spend 50% or less of

25:10

your waking hours sitting down and try to break

25:12

up your prolonged sitting every 30 minutes for just a

25:14

few minutes.

25:14

If you should get up every half hour. Exactly. Charlotte,

25:17

thanks so much for having me today.

25:25

So we were trying to find out how

25:27

much sitting is too much sitting and I think we've

25:29

got our answer from Charlotte, haven't we? About nine

25:31

hours a day. But we've come now to a place

25:34

where they're actually really trying to focus on how much time

25:36

people spend sitting and it's Chisinhale

25:39

Primary School in East London and they're

25:41

taking part in this active movement

25:43

programme. The idea is to bring movement into the

25:45

whole school day and then to take that home

25:47

as well. So we're going to go inside and have a look. I

25:50

would use to use your whiteboard and

25:52

help each other out and stand up as I see the

25:55

answers on your

25:55

platform. The way we do it in class is when I'm

25:57

taking the register, they know they can stand up

25:59

When they aren't for English they

26:02

stand up, it's just part of our routine.

26:04

Are

26:04

they more engaged in the class or are they a bit more active?

26:07

Definitely and I think it's really helped

26:09

with their confidence as well when they stand

26:11

up they speak up more clearly in front of the whole class. We've

26:14

got learning active ambassadors, so

26:16

they've got a little badge and that's a responsibility

26:18

that they want to take on where they encourage each other

26:21

to stand up. Is

26:21

it easy to do as a teacher to bring

26:24

all that stuff in? Because it's probably not what you were taught when

26:26

you were training a few teachers.

26:27

Definitely not, I mean the first time I did forget

26:29

a few times to remind them but then it just

26:31

got really easy because it just became a habit

26:34

for them. I don't know if it's

26:35

just because we're here but they're very well behaved. When

26:37

I sit down they all stand up because they just love doing

26:39

it, it's definitely fun for them. Should every school

26:41

be doing this? I definitely think so. Arumi,

26:44

thank you so much for talking to me. I have realised that

26:46

I've only been here half an hour lately. It's doing my back

26:48

in, bending down. Please take me in. I

26:50

don't know how you do it all day. Hi

26:58

Ruben, do you like being the activity ambassador? It was

27:00

kind of fun like saying, you can get tired,

27:02

sit down. My

27:06

name is Louis. My name is Paul. My

27:08

name is Sydney. My name is Olivia. What's

27:11

it like being in a classroom where you're up and down, up and down,

27:13

up and down all the time? Pretty active

27:15

but sometimes a little tiring. It's

27:17

kind of fun but then once it's

27:19

all over, you're like, eeeh. But

27:22

then I'm still getting used to this. When you stand

27:25

up and ask questions, you build

27:27

your confidence.

27:27

Over in the middle of nothing. It's been more fun like

27:29

doing. I know the answer, I'm going to stand up. It's

27:32

fun and exciting and it gets

27:33

up awake in the morning.

27:35

You're putting me to shame. Are you enjoying

27:37

it all? Yes. On the standing. Bye

27:39

everybody! Bye!

27:43

It's

27:45

just radio, you're okay.