A growing body of research suggests that sitting for long periods of time is bad for your physical and mental health. But it can be hard to know how many movement breaks you need to counteract all that time in your chair. Now new research identifies the precise amount — a recommendation that’s both effective and doable.
“The current physical activity guidelines for adults simply recommend people should ‘sit less, move more’ to reduce the harms of sitting,” says Keith Diaz, PhD, the lead study author and a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. “While a good place to start, they don’t really give people a target to aim for. Our findings provide a realistic target to offset some of the harms.”
The Study Carefully Tracked Movements of More Than 11,000 Workers
For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 11,000 adults who participated in National Public Radio’s interactive “Body Electric Challenge,” which encouraged listeners to add movement to their days.
For 14 days straight, participants were asked to take five-minute walking breaks at a frequency of their choosing: every 30, 60, or 120 minutes.
Most participants received an email survey at 8 p.m. each day that asked them about changes in their mood, fatigue, and work performance. A random sample of 1,200 of the participants who worked full-time received five daily surveys over text at 9 a.m., 12 p.m., 3 p.m., 6 p.m., and 9 p.m., to see the immediate impact of these movement breaks.
The researchers also analyzed the different movement break schedules to see how easy they were to stick with.
After analyzing the data, the researchers found that participants reported less fatigue and low mood than they did before starting their 14 days of short movement breaks. Their good mood increased, no matter how often they took the breaks. The more breaks a person took, the more these markers improved.
But the researchers found that the 60-minute movement breaks offered the best balance between feasibility and effectiveness.
The 120-minute breaks were the easiest to stick with but were the least effective; the 30-minute breaks led to the strongest improvements in fatigue and mood, but were the hardest to commit to.
Research Has Repeatedly Flagged the Harms of Sitting
“For years, scientists have documented the harms of sitting,” Dr. Diaz says. “Worse, this is true even if you exercise. Research has shown that sitting for long periods of time increases risk of diabetes, heart disease, dementia, cancer, and early death, he points out.
Research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 2025 analyzed a week of activity-tracker data collected from nearly 90,000 people in the UK. The researchers found that people who were sedentary had a higher risk of developing a range of cardiovascular health complications, including heart attacks and heart failure.
While previous data largely focused on the physical impacts of prolonged sitting, Diaz’s study centered on the mental health effects. “The mental health impact is where the hidden costs of prolonged sitting truly are,” he says.
“When we leave work feeling drained after sitting all day, we don’t really want to engage in healthier behaviors like going to the gym, preparing a meal from scratch, or being social. Instead we end up on the couch, vegging out. Day in and day out, it creates this negative feedback cycle that can be hard to break out of.”
The Latest Findings Offer an Approachable Solution
“We still don’t have great solutions to offset the harms of sitting in a world that does so much of it,” Diaz says.
Still, the new research findings help to identify a simple, realistic behavior that most people can incorporate into their day, says Thea Gallagher, PsyD, a clinical associate professor of psychology at NYU Langone Health in New York City. “We often assume improving our health requires a major commitment — an hour-long workout, a complete lifestyle overhaul, or a perfect routine,” Dr. Gallagher notes.
As for why these breaks may be helpful, it’s likely due to how they impact the brain, says Hillary Ammon, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Anxiety and Women’s Emotional Wellness. “Movement boosts the release of ‘feel good’ neurotransmitters, like endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine,” she says. “The production of these neurotransmitters can aid in combatting low mood and feeling more energized.”
Blood flow also decreases to the brain when you don’t move for long stretches of time, Diaz says. “This means we are delivering less oxygen to our brains, which makes us feel drained and tired, even though we may have hardly moved throughout the day,” he explains. “When we take regular movement breaks throughout the day, this helps keep blood flowing to the brain more optimally and may prevent or reduce those feelings of fatigue.”
The muscles communicate directly with the brain by releasing chemical messengers called myokines, Diaz says. “It is thought that when we regularly contract our muscles, these messengers can trigger biological responses that positively impact our mood and mental health,” he says.
Overall, the message from the study is “empowering” to people who spend a lot of their day at a desk and want to improve their health, Gallagher says.
The Study Has Strengths and Limitations
The study relied on the participants filling out surveys about how they felt, which opened the data to recall bias. The participants also volunteered to be a part of the study and there was no control — as a result, there was no comparison data on the mood of people who sat for extended periods of time but didn’t take breaks.
The study was only two weeks long, making it difficult to determine the long-term impact of these sitting breaks. But the study population was large and recruited a wide range of participants across age, occupation, and work settings.
How to Incorporate Movement Breaks Into Your Day
It’s important to make these walking breaks a habit rather than relying on motivation, Gallagher says. She offers the following tips for building movement into your day.
- Set an hourly reminder on your phone.
- Stand up whenever you finish a task.
- Take a quick lap around the office.
- Walk while on a phone call.
Diaz suggests making it a habit to go for a five-minute walk after you finish a work task before diving into the next one.
Overall, Diaz says it’s important to remember that incorporating these small movements into your day can have a big impact. “The happiest, healthiest, and most productive versions of ourselves move — and they move regularly,” he says.
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