It’s a necessary evil in modern working life and hardly seems like the riskiest way to spend your day, but your desk job is more dangerous than you’d think.

Those of us who spend the highest percentage of our days sitting are 112 per cent more likely to develop diabetes, 147 per cent more at risk of cardiovascular events, and 49 per cent more prone to premature death according to research published in the journal Diabetologia.

But why?

“Sitting for long periods slows the metabolism, affecting the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure and break down body fat,” explains leading NHS cardiologist Dr Neil Srinivasan.

“The likely physiological mechanism is fewer skeletal muscle contractions, resulting in reduced lipoprotein lipase activity.”

The latter is an enzyme that breaks down triglycerides, a type of blood fat. Though they sound like thuggish cavemen, triglycerides are not all bad.

“They are our main source of energy and are essential for good health,” says Srinivasan. If you have too much in your blood, however, it can raise the risk of heart disease and reduce glucose clearance.

Sitting not so pretty: there are myriad health risks tha come with staying seated for long periods of time - Getty
Sitting not so pretty: there are myriad health risks tha come with staying seated for long periods of time - Getty
There are – quite literally – steps you can take. In 2016, a meta-analysis published in The Lancet concluded that those who sat for eight hours or more during the day and only engaged in low levels of activity had an average death risk of 9.9 per cent. Those who reduced their sitting time to four hours and were active for at least an hour reduced their risk to 6.8 per cent.

The good news? An hour of moderately intense activity, such as fast-paced walking, brought the risk of eight hours’ sitting back down to similar levels.

Further research suggests that people who sit for less than 30 minutes at a time have the lowest risk of early death.

Nonetheless: “Try and walk or cycle to and from work, or get off the bus a few stops early and walk the rest,” suggests Srinivasan.

Move every 30 minutes
What you do while at your desk counts too. “Get into the habit of standing up to speak when you make phone calls, and get up every 30 minutes,” says Srinivasan. But also: “Even short bursts of movement will boost your metabolism and activate skeletal muscle.” Take a stroll to a colleague’s desk, or walk to the water cooler. If you are working from home, however, beware of a walk to the fridge …

Fight back with food
Choose healthier fats, like mackerel - Getty
Choose healthier fats, like mackerel - Getty
Dietary choices can also help to keep your triglycerides in check. Choose healthier fats, Srinivasan suggests. Instead of red meat, try fish high in omega-3 fatty acids – such as mackerel or salmon. Avoid trans fats or foods with hydrogenated oils or fats.

Booze is a baddie: “Alcohol is high in calories and sugar and has a particularly potent effect on triglycerides.”

You may need to ditch the biscuit barrel, too: “Simple carbohydrates, such as sugar and foods made with white flour or fructose, can increase triglycerides.”

Perfect your posture
Your cardiovascular system is not alone in its suffering. As you sit through Zoom meetings (and scroll through social media) your neck and back begin to scream too.

“After about 30-40 minutes of sitting, our heart rate slows due to the reduced demand for oxygen because we aren’t moving,” explains Daniel Kay, osteopath at The Vital Practice. “This means all our organs and tissues, including our postural muscles, are working less efficiently and cannot effectively maintain our posture.”

As we start to slump, “the load through the spinal discs of our lower back and the spinal joints in our necks is increased, causing disc and spinal joint pain, which in turn causes the postural muscles to shorten and fatigue. Sometimes they can seize and become achy and painful.”

Ouch. Over time, says Kay, tissues will degenerate, leading to chronic symptoms. So what should we do to soothe our spines?

You could try sitting on a bouncy ball. Online, plenty of influencers insist that doing so will activate your core and solve the problem. However, embarrassment aside, a systematic review published in 2013 found that, of seven studies analysed, five demonstrated no increase in trunk muscle activation. The remaining two did report differences, but also “increased discomfort, increased fatigue” and led to “greater spinal shrinkage”.

If that news has sent you bouncing back to your conventional chair, then keep your feet planted flat and firmly on the floor or on a footstool, with a small space between your knees and the seat of the chair, your knees at the same height as, or slightly lower than, your hips and with your screen just below eye level.

Stand proud
Standing desks: far from just the new office fad, they have real health benefits - Getty
Standing desks: far from just the new office fad, they have real health benefits - Getty
What about the standing desks that seem to be colonising offices throughout the land?

“Standing is better than sitting as the spinal compression is less pronounced,” says Kay. “We rarely maintain a completely still stance. We are always shifting weight from one leg to the other, and this helps dissipate the pressures on your back.”

Because staying in any one position for too long makes unsustainable demands on our bodies, Kay points out: “Whether we are sitting or standing we should be religious about taking regular breaks where we walk around a bit to help our tissues become more oxygenated and therefore able to maintain our postural health throughout the day.”

In Kay’s words: “Motion is the lotion.”