Sitting for more than eight hours during the workday could increase anxiety and depression, but standing up and moving frequently could reduce or prevent the problems, a study showed.
Research published in the online journal Public Library of Science analyzed the emotional well-being of 42 adults who worked more than 30 hours per week, outfitting them with monitoring equipment for a week to measure their movement, focusing on how often they walk.
The study showed that the amount of time spent sitting during the workday had affected the participants’ anxiety and depression levels, as well as their mental activity.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Participants who sat for fewer than eight hours had Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale scores lower than groups who sat for eight to 10 hours or more than 10 hours, the study showed.
National Pingtung University of Science and Technology sports and health professor Hsu Chin-hsing (徐錦興) said that the longer people spend sitting, the lower their spirits.
If a person spends all day sitting at work and maintains a sedentary lifestyle at home, they would have a higher likelihood of developing anxiety and depressions, but if the same person engaged in sustained aerobic exercise, the brain would excrete endorphins, dopamine and other hormones that would induce feelings of pleasure, he said.
People can use apps on cellphones or wearable devices, or use a kitchen timer, to remind themselves to get up and move and to sit for not more than eight hours in a day, he said.
John Tung Mental Health Center director Yeh Ya-hsing (葉雅馨) said prolonged sitting while working at a computer leads to soreness and pain in the neck, shoulders and waist.
Having few interactions with people during the day while concentrating at work allows feelings of anxiety and depression and negative emotions to build up, he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater