Stand Up. Right Now.

The end of sitting at work. A new call to get up off our chairs. To stand and move! We’ll look at how that works.

We all know that just sitting on our duffs at the office is no good for our health. But the news on just how bad it is just keeps coming. Get up, stand up is the word from all over now. And better yet - get up, stand up and move. Easy to say. Many are already well down this road. A lot of others, still on their keisters. To be the first one to start standing in the office can be awkward. First treadmill desk, can get crowded. First “walking meetings,” may challenge the culture. But it’s time! This hour On Point, all the latest how and why on the urge to get up, stand up and move at work.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Dr. James Levine, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Co-director of Obesity Solutions. Author of "Get Up! Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It." (@jameslevinemd)

Alan Hedge, professor and director of the human factors and ergonomics laboratory at Cornell University.

Marcus Baer, associate professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Wall Street Journal: The Price We Pay for Sitting Too Much — "For every half-hour working in an office, people should sit for 20 minutes, stand for eight minutes and then move around and stretch for two minutes, Dr. Hedge recommends, based on a review of studies that he has presented at corporate seminars and expects to publish. He says standing for more than 10 minutes tends to cause people to lean, which can lead to back problems and other musculoskeletal issues."

Annals of Internal Medicine: Sedentary Time and Its Association With Risk for Disease Incidence, Mortality, and Hospitalization in Adults — "Our study demonstrated that after statistical adjustment for physical activity, sedentary time (assessed as either daily overall sedentary time, sitting time, television or screen time, or leisure time spent sitting) was independently associated with a greater risk for all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease incidence or mortality, cancer incidence or mortality (breast, colon, colorectal, endometrial, and epithelial ovarian), and type 2 diabetes in adults."

New Yorker: The Walking Alive — "The worst news is that hard exercise for an hour a day may not cancel out the damage done by sitting for six hours. According to a 2006 study by an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, men who sit for six hours or more daily have an over-all death rate twenty per cent higher than men who sit for three hours or less—in other words, they are twenty per cent more likely to die of any cause than men who are active."