"Sitting is as dangerous as smoking."
"We're sitting to death!"
We have often read this type of headline in the media, where researchers have raised the alarm about how little we move and how dangerous it is with office work precisely because of all the sitting at the computer.
But according to a new meta-study, in which researchers compiled 26 other studies with nearly 3,000 office workers, these alarms are partly exaggerated.
- We have reviewed studies where activity meters were used on all participants and measured exactly how much office workers stand, walk and sit during their working hours, says Svend Erik Mathiassen, professor of occupational health science at the University of Gävle.
Close to EU guidelines
The compilation shows that an office worker sits on average 70 percent of his working time, stands 20 percent and moves more actively during 10 percent of the working day.
These are values that are quite close to the guidelines set by the EU for what can be considered healthy.
The concern that there has been about office workers sitting unhealthily a lot is often based on studies where the participants themselves had to estimate what they do during their working hours, according to Professor Svend Erik Mathiassen.
- Of course there are large individual variations and some who sit far too much, but on the whole we don't sit as much as we feared.
Activity-based offices do not help
The study also shows that so-called activity-based offices, which are designed so that the employee is forced to move between different spaces in the workplace, do not have any major effect on movement patterns.
- The important thing for health is not just the total time you sit or stand, says Svend Erik Mathiassen.
There must be a good distribution during working hours so that you never sit or stand for too long.