Stand Up and walk around, even just for 2 minutes, every 20 minutes

This is the recommendation of a recent broadcast of Fresh Air on NPR – and I’ve been saying this to my clients for quite some time, especially those of you who sit at a computer all day.  New York Times Phys Ed columnist Gretchen Reynolds details some of the surprisingly simple ways you can combat the effects of a sedentary lifestyle in her new book, The First 20 Minutes.

Reynolds recommends standing for two minutes every 20 minutes while desk-bound — even if you can’t move around your office. (I remember my wife setting herself a recurring reminder in Outlook to do just that, years ago.) “That sounds so simple,” she tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “But that actually has profound consequences.

“Sitting for long periods of time — when you don’t stand up, don’t move at all — tends to cause changes physiologically within your muscles,” says Reynolds. “You stop breaking up fat in your bloodstream, you start getting accumulations of fat … in your liver, your heart and your brain. You get sleepy. You gain weight. You basically are much less healthy than if you’re moving.”