The results of research, published by the BMJ, show that employees who used the workstations for 12 months, on average, reduced their sitting time by more than an hour a day, with potentially significant health benefits.

High levels of sedentary behavior (aka sitting) have been associated with an increased risk of chronic diseases (like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers) as well as death; and have been shown to be detrimental for work-related outcomes such as feelings of “engagement and presenteeism” (going to work despite illness).

Office workers are one of the most sedentary populations, spending 70-85% of time at work sitting, but studies looking at ways to reduce sitting in the workplace have been deemed low quality.

So a team of researchers based in the UK, with collaborators in Australia, set out to evaluate the impact of (Stand More AT (SMArT) Work) an intervention designed to reduce sitting time at work.

The trial involved 146 office workers based at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust of whom 77 were randomly assigned to the intervention group and 69 to the control group over a 12-month period.

The average age of participants was 41 years, 78% reported being of white European ethnicity, and the majority (80%) were women.

The intervention group were given a height adjustable workstation, a brief seminar with supporting leaflet, and workstation instructions with sitting and standing targets. They also received feedback on sitting and physical activity, an action planning and goal setting booklet, a self monitoring and prompt tool, and coaching sessions. The control group carried on working as usual.

Workers’ sitting time was measured using a device worn on the thigh at the start of the study (baseline) and at 3, 6, and 12 months. Daily physical activity levels and questions about work (eg. job performance, engagement) and health (eg. mood, quality of life) were also recorded.

At the start of the study, overall sitting time was 9.7 hours per day. The results show that sitting time was lower by 50.62 minutes per day at 3 months, 64.40 minutes per day at 6 months, and 82.39 minutes per day at 12 months in the intervention group compared with the control group. Prolonged sitting time was also reduced in the intervention group.

The reduction in sitting was largely replaced by time spent standing rather than moving, as stepping time and physical activity remained unchanged.

The results also suggest improvements in job performance, work engagement, occupational fatigue, presenteeism, daily anxiety and quality of life, but no notable changes were found for job satisfaction, cognitive function, and sickness absence.

The authors say this was a well-designed trial and their results remained largely unchanged after further analyses. But they acknowledge that their findings may not apply to other organizations, and that self-reporting of work-related outcomes may have affected the results.

Nevertheless, they say the SMArT Work successfully reduced sitting time over the short, medium, and longer term, and positive changes were observed in work related and psychological health.

And they suggest future research should assess the longer term health benefits of displacing sitting with standing and how best to promote movement rather than just standing while at work.

According to recent research, workers are by and large reluctant to report harassment. A survey for the recruiting CareerBuilder found that 72 percent of people who are sexually harassed at work don’t report it, either because they didn’t want to be labeled a troublemaker or were afraid of losing their job. Twenty-eight percent of those who felt sexually harassed said they were sexually harassed by their boss, and more than 54 percent said they didn’t confront the person who was harassing them.

The survey was conducted online by The Harris Poll between November 28 and December 20, 2017 and included a representative sample of 809 full-time workers across industries and company sizes in the U.S. private sector.

The issue also appeared across levels of employment. Although a manager or supervisor was the harasser in 36 percent of the cases, peers were more frequent harassers (60 percent). Other harassers included clients, vendors and direct reports.

But although the situation often seems daunting or overwhelming, there are steps you can take to eliminate harassment. Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder, shared tips for workers who have been sexually harassed in the workplace.

• Know your rights: Find out if your company has a policy in place. The policy will usually include your rights, protections against retaliation and an outline of what happens if a claim is reported. Even if your company doesn’t have a policy, keep in mind that that according to the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination. You have the legal right to be protected from sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlines protections that Americans have in the workplace. Other state laws or employer policies may also protect you from sexual harassment.
• Write it down: Write down what you plan to say to report the harassment. Have as many specifics as possible. Make sure you clarify how the harassment has affected your ability to do your job. Whether or not you ultimately decide to file a complaint, it can be useful to keep a written record of the times you have felt harassed and the types of harassment you have experienced.
• Voice your concern: If you feel comfortable speaking to the person directly, politely but firmly tell them to stop, being specific about what behaviors make you uncomfortable. You can send them a letter if you don’t feel comfortable talking in person.
• Tell someone: If you don’t feel comfortable speaking to the person directly, report the harassment to your superior, your harasser’s superior or your HR department. How you should go about this will depend on your company’s individual policies.

Here are some simple exercises you can undertake right where you are that will help to keep you on a more energetic keel:

* To experience an energy boost, inhale slowly through your nose, and hold your breath for two seconds, then exhale through your mouth. Repeat this often.

* To loosen up your shoulders and upper torso, using a wide circular motion, roll your shoulders forward 4 or 5 times. Then do the same thing in reverse.

* To stretch your neck, turn your head slowly from side to side and look over each shoulder. Count to three and then repeat the exercise several more times.

* To stretch your back, while seated (and with no one looking!), slowly bend your upper body between your knees. Hold this position for a few seconds, then sit up and relax. Repeat this exercise a few more times.

* To stretch the muscles in your forearms and give your wrists some relief, hold your arms straight out in front of you and raise and lower your hands bending them at your wrists. Repeat this several times.

* To give your upper back and shoulder blades some relief, fold your arms in front of you, raise them up to your shoulders, and then bring your elbows straight back. Hold this for several seconds. Repeat several times.

* To relax your fingers and hands and make them feel more nimble, make a tight fist with your hands and hold it for several seconds. Then, spread your fingers as far as you can and hold for another five seconds. Repeat this exercise several times.

Better Eye Health

Your computer, tablets and other screens are comprised of pixels, dots of light that are bright at the center and dimmer at their borders. It is hard to read at your PC for a prolonged period because your eyes have nothing to “lock onto.”

Common ailments people experience when looking at a monitor repeatedly include headaches, itching or burning eyes, blurry vision, fatigue, aching shoulders, and an aching neck. Gazing into screens for long periods of time, day after day, quickly adds up to eye strain, which directly contributes to a drop in energy. Eye strain is now the single most prevalent office complaint in America. One government study estimates 91% of people who use a computer for more than three hours daily, experience eye strain at one time or another.

Here are some simple exercises that can help you minimize or even ward off eye-strain associated with too much time in front of a monitor:

* Reduce any glare from the walls surrounding you especially if it reflects back onto your screen.

* Seek to match the brightness of your room to that of your monitor.

* Reduce surrounding lighting.

* Refocus your eyes on distant objects every few minutes, then turn back to your monitor.

Finally, blink often!

Tours offer a chance to see things with the added commentary and assistance of a knowledgeable leader who has done background research on the place or overall topic. Walking and biking tours also give people a chance for some exercise, while bus tours are good for covering more ground.

Decide whether or not you are you giving tours for free (for a family or friends, for instance) or to earn money. Find out what the going rate is for tours in your area. Are you giving a tour for family or friends, a school group or club to which you belong? Consult a few people for suggestions of places to visit, to milk the nostalgic value. Will you set up advance enrollment for your tours, or a just-show-up policy? If people are paying, do you want cash only or will you accept checks and even credit cards? If you have Square or PayPal apps, you can use those for payment.

I have mapped out and conducted tours for the past four years. The experience has been lots of fun, giving me chances to learn while doing research and speaking with participants. Doing tours is an incentive for me to bike and walk more as well, although sometimes my feet ache after walking tours, and a few times I panicked when a participant asked a tough question, or when we encountered bad traffic and had to change plans on the spot. Being a tour guide can keep you on your toes!

How to go about doing this? First, think about tours you have joined; what you liked and disliked about them, how you would improve upon them. Are you good at speaking in front of a group and making small talk? If so, guiding could work out well for you. (If not, but wish to try your hand at tours, practice your speech skills.)

Do you need a license to conduct tours in your city or town? Find out. In New York City, for example, you need a license and there is a multiple choice test to take. In New York City there is the DCAS agency that is in charge of such licensing. Go online to find out the requirements of your region.

Do you want to work with an established tour group or go out on your own? I have done both, and each has pros and cons. Look into tour companies (businesses and non-profit groups) in your region, and contact them about possibilities. I have given tours for a New York City group called the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy, both for school groups and adults, after I contacted them and sat for an interview with the women who run it. But I have also run tours on my own, promoting them on a Facebook page geared toward a specialty topic. Use social media sites to reach potential customers and groups. Facebook nostalgia pages and Twitter feeds are especially good to target. If you are interested in leading tours in a museum or a park, contact the office and see if they have such a need.

If you give a tour for a particular business or non-profit group, they may want you to follow a pre-made tour of their devising. This can be easier for you but also restricting if you wish to give a tour tailored to your expertise. If you are the author of a book or write a newspaper column or web blog, people might contact you about giving a tour based upon your topic. That is how I initially got into giving tours, when a rabbi emailed me about leading a bus tour based on a book I wrote, The Lost Synagogues of the Bronx and Queens.

Certain tools can help you map out a feasible itinerary. A cell phone mapping application or in particular, Google Maps, can be invaluable. Figure out which places you want to visit along your route and then plot them out by using “My Maps” and the “Create or Open a Map” function.

Will you visit inside various buildings, or merely stand in front and speak about them? You have to figure out a mix that would hold the interest of participants. Sometimes you will need permission to get inside certain buildings; there may be restrictions based on the size of your group.

There are various factors that can impact a tour, and you may not have control over them all. Typically, I set up and advertise tours a few weeks in advance to accommodate my schedule; but I do not know the precise weather that much in advance. I regret to say that a few times no one showed up to my tours because there was rain earlier in the day.

Will your tour date or time conflict with something popular, such as a major parade in the area? You may want to select a different date. My first bus tour, in the Bronx, New York City, conflicted with a parade on a major street (the Grand Concourse). On the spot, I reworked part of the tour, jettisoning two locations for a different one that was more accessible. Your tour may come up against a car accident, burst pipes on a street, or other woes. You have to be flexible and make the best of it.

Overall I have greatly enjoyed making and leading tours, and I have joined tours given by semi-retired adults who relished the sociable, educational part-time work involved. One described the experience as “conducting a fun open-air lesson,” and that is fitting.

Image: Ellen Levitt, second from left, after leading a tour for the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy in New York City.

Ellen Levitt is a veteran New York City public school teacher, as well as a freelance writer. Among her books is Walking Manhattan from www.wildernesspress.com . She holds a first-degree black belt in the Tora Dojo Association style of karate, and has taught children’s and women’s classes. She is a lifelong resident of Brooklyn.

Now think about where your job falls in your list of passions. For many, a job is just a means to an end – it provides money for an education, an SUV, a house and more.

But finding passion in your job – whether it’s a clerical or professional position – is key to career success.

Everyone can achieve a great career. A nose-to-the-grindstone focus will overcome workplace obstacles that keep you from climbing the ladder to more responsibility and a higher salary.

When you are enthusiastic about what you do, the stress, challenges and bumps in the road are easier to overcome. Passion serves as a driver, the thing that sustains you when things get tough.

I know from experience. I rose from receptionist at a Northern California staffing agency to becoming co-owner and vice president at Star Staffing in Petaluma, California, demonstrating how finding that passion and tapping into your strengths can ultimately pay off.

I committed to being the best receptionist I could be. By committing to being the best and channeling the positive, you can create your own destiny.

Here are my suggestions to help you find the passion in your job and start you on the path of your employment destiny:

• Everything is a learning experience. Be observant, ask questions, listen to the answers, take notes and read a lot. Become a sponge. Absorb as much information as you can. And don’t be afraid to let hard work trump a traditional education. That doesn’t mean you should forego college – but I recommend you don’t limit your options on schooling alone. If you want something, fight for it.
• Know your strengths. Figure out what you’re good at. Are you creative, competitive, outgoing – or all of the above? How do those strengths translate to your job? Also be prepared for those strengths to change over the course of your working life or to find strengths you didn’t know you had.
• Stay focused. Being disciplined and making sacrifices to achieve your goals is important. “No” is the one-word secret to staying on track.
• Surround yourself with great people. Find a mentor who readily offers help, guidance and support. If you want greatness in your life then you need to surround yourself with great people.
• Let your engagement at work and happiness show. Find little things about your job that you really enjoy, and do them very, very well. Make sure you bring all of your skills to your work. You’ll find you enjoy it because you’re good at it.

People often become frustrated at a job and instead of trying to make that situation better, they look elsewhere figuring the next job somehow will be the answer. That’s not always the case.

It’s easier to find a perfect attitude than it is to find a perfect job.

Nicole Smartt, author of “From Receptionist to Boss: Real-Life Advice for Getting Ahead At Work” (www.nicolesmartt.com) is co-owner and vice president of Star Staffing in Petaluma, Calif. She also is co-founder of the Petaluma Young Professionals Network and was the youngest recipient of the “Forty Under 40” award given by the North Bay Business Journal.

1. Learn how to coach. Coaching is not about telling or lecturing. There are specific skills required to be an effective coach. If you join a coach training program, join one that is practical; many out there teach fluff to people who should not be coaches.
2. Get focused. Choose a specific target market that you will help as a coach, and craft a compelling solution and marketing message for that market’s top challenges.
3. Be prepared for some executives to balk at the idea of coaching. Thanks to many “lightweight” coaches and the fact the many executives are reluctant to admit they could use a coach, it is sometimes easier to position yourself as a solution provider than a coach.
4. Be patient, because building your practice will take time. As executive coach David Nettina advises, “Have plenty of financial runway; this is going to take far longer than you think to make work.”
5. Build on your current network of contacts. A top advantage of coaching as a business is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on marketing. Referrals from your current power base will give you a greater return than any other form of business development.
6. Choose the best business model for you as a coach. Coaching is a flexible profession, and you can develop your own unique model. For instance, many C-level executives have a hybrid approach in which they can serve as coach, consultant, facilitator, and even interim executive. Similarly, once you develop a coaching framework, you can turn that into books, information products, seminars, and licensed programs. It is up to your aspirations, vision, and unique style.

Sarasota-based executive coach Andrew Neitlich is the author of book, Coach! The Crucial, Deceptively Simple Leadership Skill for Breakaway Performance and the Founder and Director of the Center for Executive Coaching.

In fact, the signal from a phone is comparable to the effects seen when people are actively using their own phone.

“The level of how much it affected the task at hand was really shocking,” said Courtney Yehnert, an FSU research coordinator who worked on the study as an undergraduate student before graduating in 2014.

The study, “The Attentional Cost of Receiving a Cell Notification,” was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. This is the first study to examine the effect of cell phone notifications on performance.

“Although these notifications are generally short in duration, they can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind-wandering, which has been shown to damage task performance,” the researchers wrote in the paper. “Cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants do not directly interact with a mobile device during the task.”

According to a news release from the university, the findings are significant because many public information campaigns intended to deter problematic cell phone use — while driving, for example —emphasize waiting to respond to messages and calls. However, even waiting may take a toll on attention, the researchers say. Even remembering to perform some action in the future is sufficient to disrupt performance on an unrelated concurrent task.

To conduct the study, the researchers compared the performance of participants on an attention-demanding computer task, which was divided into two parts. In the first part, participants were asked simply to complete the task. During the second part, although they were not aware of it, participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: call, text or no notification. Automated calls and texts were then sent to the personal phones of participants in the first two groups without their knowledge that the notifications were coming from the researchers.

Overall, the researchers found, participants who received notifications made substantially more mistakes on the computer task than those who didn’t. In fact, the increase in the probability of making a mistake was more than three times greater for those who received notifications. Those who received phone call notifications fared worse on the task than those who received a text alert.

The researchers then compared their results to the findings of other studies that explored the impact that actually using a cell phone had on attention performance. They found their results were similar, suggesting that receiving a notification but not responding is as distracting as actually answering the phone or replying to a text.

The study didn’t look at driving, but the researchers said the results are relevant to the problem of distracted driving.

They said, though, that the safest bet when driving is to turn off your cell phone and put it away.

In a study measuring adults’ reactions to stress, investigators from Penn State  found that adults who fail to maintain positive moods such as cheerfulness or calm when faced with the minor stressors of everyday life appear to have elevated levels of inflammation. And women can be at heightened risk.

Inflammatory responses are part of the body’s ability to protect itself via the immune system. However,  chronic inflammation can undermine health, and appears to play a role in obesity, heart disease and cancer, according to a news release from the university.

The research was reported in the journal Health Psychology.

Nancy Sin, postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Healthy Aging and Department of Biobehavioral Health, Penn State and her colleagues showed that the frequency of daily stressors, in and of itself, was less consequential for inflammation than how an individual reacted to those stressors.

“A person’s frequency of stress may be less related to inflammation than responses to stress,” said Sin. “It is how a person reacts to stress that is important.”

“To our knowledge, this paper is the first to link biomarkers of inflammation with positive mood responses to stressors in everyday life,” said Jennifer E. Graham-Engeland, associate professor of biobehavioral health, Penn State.

The study was based on a cross-sectional sample of 872 adults from the National Study of Daily Experiences. The participants reported daily stressors and emotional reactions for eight consecutive days. The participants also submitted blood samples, which were evaluated for inflammatory markers.

Subjects were interviewed by phone every day for eight consecutive days. They were asked to rate their positive and negative emotions, as well as whether or not they encountered stressors. This enabled researchers to evaluate a person’s emotional response on days when they experience stressors, and compare it to days when they do not.

“We calculated reactivity scores to see how participants generally reacted to stressors,” Sin said. “Then we used it to predict two markers of inflammation.”

“[Our] study suggests that having a higher occupational level protects the brain from some of the effects of this disease, allowing people to live longer after developing the disease,” said Lauren Massimo, postdoctoral fellow, Penn State College of Nursing.

Degeneration of the frontal and temporal parts of the brain leads to a common form of dementia affecting people under the age of 65. It results in changes in personality and behavior and problems with language, but does not affect memory, according to a news release from Penn State.

“People with frontotemporal dementia typically live six to ten years after the symptoms emerge, but little has been known about what factors contribute to this range,” said Massimo.

The findings were reported in the journal Neurology.

Massimo and colleagues reviewed the medical charts of 83 people who had an autopsy after death to confirm the diagnosis of either frontotemporal dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. They also had information about patients’ primary occupations.

Occupations were ranked by U.S. Census categories, with jobs such as factory worker and service worker in the lowest level, trade workers and sales people in the next level, and professional and technical workers — such as lawyers and engineers — in the highest level.

Researchers determined onset of symptoms by the earliest report from family members of persistently abnormal behavior. Survival was defined as from the time symptoms began until death.

The 34 people autopsied with frontotemporal dementia had an average survival time of about seven years. The people with more challenging jobs were more likely to have longer survival times than those with less challenging jobs.

People in the highest occupation level survived an average of 116 months, while people in the lower occupation group survived an average of 72 months, suggesting that individuals who had been in the professional workforce may live up to three years longer.

Center; and Murray Grossman, professor of neurology, director of University of Pennsylvania Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, also collaborated on this research.

A team of Johns Hopkins investigators reviewed 4,200 studies for evidence of the programs’ effectiveness.

The findings were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“Primary care doctors need to know what programs have rigorous trials showing that they work, but they haven’t had much evidence to rely on,” said Kimberly Gudzune, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of medicine and a weight-loss specialist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Our review should give clinicians a better idea of what programs they might consider for their patients.”

According to a release from Johns Hopkins Medicine, the investigators found that of 32 major commercial weight-loss programs marketed nationwide, only 11 have been rigorously studied in randomized controlled trials.

Of these studies, the researchers said, they found only two programs are supported by gold-standard data showing that participants, on average, lost more weight after one year in these programs than people who were either dieting on their own, got printed health information, or received other forms of education and counseling sessions.

However, the researchers said, results were generally “modest” in those programs, with participants losing on average between 3 and 5 percent more than nonprogram participants.

“Clinicians could consider referring patients who are overweight or obese to Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. Other popular programs, such as NutriSystem, show promising weight-loss results, but additional studies evaluating long-term outcomes are needed,” according to the published report.

The researchers cautioned that not all the the 42 studies they analyzed were equally well designed. And since they found few studies that ran 12 months or longer, it was often unclear how many participants sustained their weight loss over the long term.

“We want people to experience the health benefits of weight loss — lower blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar, and lower risk of developing diseases like diabetes,” says Jeanne Clark, M.D., M.P.H., the Frederick Brancati, M.D., M.H.S., Endowed Professor of Medicine, director of the Division of Internal Medicine and a study co-author. “Those benefits are long-term goals; losing weight for three months, then regaining it, has limited health benefits. That’s why it’s important to have studies that look at weight loss at 12 months and beyond.”

According to the Hopkins Medicine news release, the NutriSystem program also produced more weight loss at three months than counseling or education alone, but the authors couldn’t find any long-term trials of that program. Programs based on the Atkins diet — high in fat, low in carbohydrates — also helped people lose more weight at six months and 12 months than counseling alone. The approach “appears promising,” the researchers wrote.