Sitting for a long time increases feelings of depression and anxiety

In the first few months of the COVID-19 outbreak, people’s daily commute became a drag between the bedroom and the living room due to people’s compliance with home orders or self-isolation

In short, during the outbreak, many people suddenly became more sedentary

"Sitting is a despicable behavior," said Jacob Meyer, assistant professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University and lead author of the paper

As the director of the ISU Health and Exercise Laboratory, Meyer and his team studied the relationship between physical activity and sedentary behavior and mental health, and how these changes affect the way people think, feel, and perceive the world

Meyer said: "In March 2020, we know that COVID will affect our behavior.

To understand these changes, Meyer and a team of researchers received survey responses from more than 3,000 study participants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia

Meyer said: "We know that when people's physical activity and screen time change, it is related to their general mental health, but we have never seen such a large population of data respond to sudden changes before

Survey data showed that shortly after the new coronary pneumonia-related restrictions took effect, participants who met the "U.

Meyer's latest paper in Frontiers in Psychiatry is a follow-up study on whether the behavior and mental health of participants have changed over time

Meyer said: "In the second study, we found that, on average, people's mental health has improved in eight weeks

The mental health of those who sit most of the day has improved significantly

Meyer emphasized that the discovery of the "correlation" between sedentary and mental health does not mean that prolonged sitting can lead to depression

Meyer said: "It is certainly worthwhile to conduct more investigations

Meyer said that starting and stopping a habit is very difficult, even if someone wants to change their behavior

Meyer advises people to take a break when sitting for long periods of time

Meyer said: "If you no longer walk around in the lobby to attend face-to-face meetings, you can still use your sitting rest time to take a walk before and after Zoom calls

People who work from home can try to walk around the block around the working day, imitating the way of commuting before the epidemic, Meyer said, this is good for people's body and spirit, and helps to increase the structure of the day
.