Keep moving at work! Move!

Continuing with our crusade against musculoskeletal disorders, today we bring documentation from the campaign belonging to EU-OSHA entitled, Healthy Work: let's relax the loads (2020-2022) relevant to try to avoid sedentary lifestyle at work, which we see has increased due to teleworking that now prevails in our companies and that we hope has come to stay.

But why is it important to avoid a sedentary lifestyle? We see it at a glance:

That is, a sedentary lifestyle can cause or aggravate the following pathologies:

• Cardiovascular diseases
• Type 2 diabetes
• Obesity
• Certain types of cancers
• Muscle stiffness and weakness

Now that we are clear, let's remedy it. In a few points we are going to summarize some recommendations that EU-OSHA gives us to try to avoid a sedentary lifestyle at work:

1. Try not to spend more than 5 hours sitting a day.
2. Take short breaks every half hour.
3. After sitting for 2 hours, get up and move for at least 10 minutes.
4. Alternate positions, standing, sitting and walking.

We can also perform some small gestures to move, such as:

• Move to your colleague's table instead of sending them an email or calling them on the phone.
• Walk while we are talking on the phone.
• Park a little further from the office.
• Go up/down stairs instead of taking the elevator.
• Take micro breaks.
• Drink water frequently.
• At mealtime, take a short walk.
• Change your posture frequently at your workplace.
• Set alarms on your mobile to remind you of short breaks or the water you have drunk.

What is clear is that if we want to change habits at work, we must maintain a two-way employee-employer communication channel, propose discussion spaces where we can talk about the problems detected and the measures that can be implemented, reaching agreements, and of course managers and managers must, as we always say, lead by example.

So you know, at work:

KEEP MOVING!!!!