Stand up for yourself!
- 1. Stand up for yourself! By Jason Richardson, Corporate Communications Manager
- 2. Your workplace might be killing you!
- 3. Seriously It’s not the shredder (Although, you should be careful!) It’s…
- 5. Seriously If you spend most of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk! Irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, many studies have concluded that sitting for long periods is bad for you.
- 6. Don’t stay seated Sitting is one of the most passive things you can do. You burn more energy by chewing gum or fidgeting than you do sitting still in a chair. Compared to sitting, standing in one place is hard work.
- 7. Get up! To stand, you have to tense your leg muscles, and engage the muscles of your back and shoulders; while standing, you often shift from leg to leg. All of this burns energy.
- 8. Study one A study, published last year in the journal Circulation, looked at nearly 9,000 Australians and concluded that for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11 percent.
- 9. Study two Another, based on data from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle study, asked more than 11,000 people aged over 25 about their weekly TV viewing. The researchers then compared these viewing times with Australian mortality rates.
- 10. Study two (cont.) They found that in 2008 Australian adults watched 9.8 billion hours of TV and they concluded that life expectancy dropped by 22 minutes for every hour of viewing. Those who watched the most TV a day — six hours — lived 4.8 years less than those who watched none.
- 11. Study three The American Cancer Society tracked the health of 123,000 Americans from 1992-2006 and found that men who spend six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting have an overall death rate about 20 percent higher than men who sit for three hours or less.
- 12. Study three (cont.) The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher.
- 13. Could TV really be evil?
- 14. Stay on your toes While TV seems somewhat demonised in these studies, a number of writers have argued that being seated at a desk must also be harmful. Their answer?
- 15. Standing desks Popular in 18 th and 19 th centuries. Also, more recently, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a standing desk user.
- 16. DIY desks One way to trial a standing desk is to put a coffee table on your existing desk.
- 17. Or something else • Nice cans!
- 18. Take it higher!
- 19. Or re-purpose a cabinet
- 20. My desk for the last four weeks
- 21. Don’t be a vegie! Take action and stay healthy!
- 22. Break out of your chair! So you can enjoy other things that are bad for you!