Jaume Padilla, PhD

Your employees who sit at desks for most of an eight-hour workday may be paying a price with their vascular health, according to new research. Fortunately, however, a solution exists.

Investigators from the University of Missouri School of Medicine found that when a person sits for six consecutive hours, blood flow to the lower legs is greatly reduced. By walking for 10 minutes after a prolonged period of sitting, however, vascular health can be restored. Their work recently was published in the journal Experimental Physiology.

Because workplaces can be sedentary environments, the researchers said it’s important that people break up desk time with a short walk.

“Studies have shown that sitting less can lead to better metabolic and cardiovascular health,” says Jaume Padilla, PhD, an assistant professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the medical school and lead author of the study. “However, more research is needed to determine if repeated periods of reduced vascular function with prolonged sitting lead to long-term vascular complications.”