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Taking breaks at work may have health benefits
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Shine On
New research suggests you shouldn't feel guilty about taking frequent breaks at work—it may actually be good for your health.
A study from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne Australia indicates that breaking up long periods of sitting with short bouts of exercise could help reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes. Light or moderate walking after eating helped to prevent blood sugar spikes in the study's participants, who were all overweight or obese.
Post-meal blood sugar spikes have previously been linked to cardiovascular issues and diabetes, though the Baker study didn't look at long-term health benefits.
This was only studied over one day," Professor David Dunstan, who conducted the study, told Reuters. "The next question is, can that reduction be [achieved regularly] and translate to reductions in atherosclerosis?"
According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, cardiovascular disease is one of Canada's leading causes of death, accounting for 29% of all deaths in Canada in 2008.
Meanwhile, Canada's diabetes rate has grown over the last 10 years, according to Statistics Canada. By 2010, 5.4 percent of Canadian women and 7.4 percent of men over the age of 12 had been diagnosed with the disease.
For the study, Dunstan and his team monitored the blood sugar and insulin levels of 19 fairly sedentary adults while they sat for seven hours a day for three days. Each day, they drank a high-calorie, sugar-laden drink after the first two hours.
On the first day, participants were allowed to read, watch TV or work on a computer. On the second, they were asked to walk every 20 minutes, and on the third, they did more vigorous exercises every 20 minutes.
Getting up and walking around reduced the total rise in glucose by an average of 24 percent, compared to sitting all day. The added benefits of intense exercise versus walking around were minimal.
Muscle contractions help take up glucose into the muscle, according to Barry Braun, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, which explains the beneficial effects of even moderate exercise on blood sugar levels.
Braun told Reuters, "What's shocking to me with these studies is not how good breaks are but how bad sitting is."
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