Standing up more often may impact heart health for postmenopausal women

The simple daily habit of standing up more often may impact heart health for postmenopausal women, according to a new study from University of California San Diego. Researchers reported that women experiencing overweight or obesity who increased daily sit-to-stand movements saw measurable improvements in blood pressure.

The findings, published recently in the journal Circulation, suggest that frequently taking short standing breaks, even without increasing intense exercise, may offer a boost to cardiovascular wellness.

Public health messaging urges us to sit less but doesn't tell us the best ways to do that. Our findings suggest that while sitting less was helpful, interrupting sitting with brief standing breaks - even if you don't sit less - can support healthy blood pressure and improve health."

Sheri Hartman, Ph.D., first author, UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science professor

The Rise for Health Study, a randomized controlled trial, evaluated approaches for changing sitting behaviors and examined the physiologic impacts among postmenopausal women on blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Postmenopausal women often spend their waking time sitting, putting them at higher risk of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, cancer and premature death. 

Researchers examined two specific behaviors over three months:

• Sit less group: Try to sit less during the day.
• Sit-to-stand group: Focus on rising from a sitting position more frequently.

Both groups were compared to a control group which received general health tips but were not asked to change their sitting habits.

Interestingly, neither sitting less nor standing up more often showed a significant improvement in blood sugar. And, while the "sit less" group cut sitting time by 75 minutes per day and showed some improvements in blood pressure, it did not meet statistical significance.

Women in the sit-to-stand group increased the number of times they stood up by an average of 25 per day and lowered their diastolic blood pressure by 2.24 mmHg more than the control group. While not reaching a clinically meaningful change of 3-5 mmHg, this measurable decrease demonstrates that within just three months, increasing sit-to-stand behavior can lower diastolic blood pressure.

The researchers suggest that additional improvements may require more than three months to take effect, so they have now submitted a new grant to evaluate both behaviors over a longer period in older men and women.

"What excites me most about this study is that women set their own goals and made a real difference in their sitting behaviors. With a little coaching, we can teach ourselves to sit less and it makes a tangible difference to our short-and long-term health," said co-author Andrea Z. LaCroix, Ph.D., distinguished professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science.

"Adapting real-world interventions that are easy, realistic and aligned with our personal goals - such as stand up from sitting 25 extra times per day, like two times per hour over 12 hours - may be doable for so many of us."

Additional co-authors include: Dorothy D. Sears, Loki Natarajan, Rong W. Zablocki, Lindsay Dillon, James F. Sallis and Simon Schenk at UC San Diego; Ruohui Chen at UC San Diego and Northwestern University; Jeffrey S. Patterson at Arizona State University; David W. Dunstan at Deakin University and the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Australia; Neville Owen at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and Swinburne University of Technology, Australia; and Dori E. Rosenberg at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute.

This research was funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute on Aging (P01 AG052352). Support was also provided by the UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute which is supported by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1TR001442).