Standing in the shadows: is standing a tonic or a toxin for cardiometabolic health?

Abstract

Need to put the health effects of standing in the research spotlight. Since the turn of the century, the spotlight on the cardiometabolic risks of prolonged sitting has overshadowed the health effects of perhaps the greatest behavioural change in the transition from hunter-gatherers to modern humans: the remarkable increase in time spent standing.1 As an example, figure 1 makes a comparison in device-measured time spent in various postures between middle-aged British adults2 and Hadza adults in Tanzania1 who still live a typical hunter-gatherer lifestyle. These data illustrate that in modern western society adults spend more than twice as much time in standing postures while stepping less, than typical hunter-gatherers. There are many differences between the populations which might confound these differences, but they indicate that globally, adults might have different compositions of physical behaviours depending on whether they are living in agricultural, industrial or information-based communities. A large portion of present-day adults spend a considerable amount of their day standing, with recent data from international adult cohorts showing that daily standing accounts for a staggering 3.1–4.6 hours/day or approximately 19%–29% of total waking times.2 3 Figure 1 Comparison in device-measured posture and activity (sedentary, standing, stepping and sleeping) allocation between middle-aged British adults2 (representing modern lifestyle) and Hadza …