Another way fidgeting benefits your health

If you or someone you know is a fidgeter, listen up! It’s bad to sit all day and it’s not great to stand the whole time, either. What to do? Short of chucking it all to become a professional ballroom dancer, more and more evidence shows that slowly driving your cubicle mate mad could be the key to better health.

A 2015 study found that women who sat for long periods of time, but were “high fidgeters”, escaped the higher mortality rates associated with a sedentary lifestyle. Start drumming your fingers now!

Fidgeting also counts towards “non-exercise activity thermogenesis” or “NEAT”- a way to up your calorie burn, just by wiggling and gesturing throughout the day. Are you shifting in your seat yet?

Now recent research published in The American Journal of Physiology Heart and Circulatory Physiology shows that “lower body fidgeting” elevates blood flow in the legs enough to counteract the hardening and narrowing of the arteries that results from uninterrupted sitting.

Consider this your official pass to tap your feet, anywhere and everywhere. During meetings, on airplanes, in quiet movie theaters. It could be saving your life...if it doesn’t make your neighbor want to kill you.