Sitting for long periods of time may be as harmful to your health as obesity and smoking. On today’s “Health Hack,” Dr. Troy Madsen has a few ways you can get up and moving throughout the day to stay healthy. To listen to the full episode, click here.

Dr. Madsen: 

Today’s health hack is standing at work. It’s something simple. You’ve probably heard about it before. There are all sorts of problems associated with sitting at work causing potentially even more health problems than things like obesity and smoking. But just sitting at work for prolonged periods can have a very significant effect on your health.

So the health hack is standing at work. If you’ve noticed problems at work, such as anxiety, just lack of engagement with work, even issues with sickness, missing work, standing has been shown to make a big difference.

The health hack is to do something very simple to remind yourself to stand. My recommendation is to set the timer on your phone for 30 minutes. Set it, hit start when you sit down. When it goes off, reset it, hit start again. When it goes off, stand up, walk around. Go get a drink of water. Go use the restroom. Just stand and work. Anything like that so you’re not sitting for prolonged periods.

I think anything where you’re just not seated for prolonged periods. And I would say if you can just get up and walk, that’s probably better than just standing. But anything to do to get out of your seat and have that consistent reminder to do it. You’re going to get in the habit of it probably after a week or two. You won’t even need the reminder. You’ll know 30 minutes, I stand. I walk around. I’m used to it. It makes me feel good.