Key Points
The researchers focused on two categories of health outcomes: cardiovascular, covering coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke; and orthostatic circulatory disease events, including orthostatic hypotension (blood pressure drops upon standing or sitting), varicose veins, chronic venous insufficiency (veins in your legs don't move blood back up to your heart), and venous ulcers..
The researchers found that when participants' total stationary time (sitting and standing) was more than 12 hours per day, risk of orthostatic circulatory disease increased 22 percent per additional hour, while risk of cardiovascular disease went up 13 percent per hour...
On the other hand, keeping sitting time under 10 hours and standing time under two hours was linked to a weak protective effect against orthostatic circulatory disease: A day of nine hours of sitting and 1.5 of standing (for a total of 11.5 hours of stationary time) lowered risk of orthostatic circulatory disease by a few percentage points, the study found...
In other words, as long as you can keep your total stationary time under 12 hours, you can use a little standing time to help you keep your sitting time under 10 hours and avoid increasing both cardiovascular and orthostatic risks, according to the data...
At the highest leisure-time activity levels reported, participants who mostly sit at work had comparable risks of all-cause mortality as those who alternated sitting and standing or who didn't sit at work..
