Effects of Increased Standing and Light-Intensity Physical Activity to Improve Postprandial Glucose in Sedentary Office Workers: Protocol for a Randomized Crossover Trial

BACKGROUND: Prolonged bouts of sedentary time, independent from the time spent in engaging in physical activity, significantly increases cardiometabolic risk. Nonetheless, the modern workforce spends large, uninterrupted portions of the day seated at a desk. Previous research suggests—via improved cardiometabolic biomarkers—that this risk might be attenuated by simply disrupting sedentary time with brief breaks of standing or moving. However, this evidence is derived from acute, highly controlled laboratory experiments and thus has low external validity. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate if similar or prolonged cardiometabolic changes are observed after a prolonged (2-week) practice of increased brief standing and moving behaviors in real-world office settings. METHODS: This randomized crossover trial, called the WorkWell Study, will compare the efficacy of two 2-week pilot intervention conditions designed to interrupt sitting time in sedentary office workers (N=15) to a control condition. The intervention conditions use a novel smartphone app to deliver real-time prompts to increase standing (STAND) or moving (MOVE) by an additional 6 minutes each hour during work. Our primary aim is to assess intervention-associated improvements to daily postprandial glucose using continuous glucose monitors. Our secondary aim is to determine whether the interventions successfully evoke substantive positional changes and light-intensity physical activity (LPA). Other outcomes include the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention conditions, fasting blood glucose concentration, femoral artery flow-mediated dilation (f-FMD), and systolic and diastolic blood pressure. RESULTS: The trial is ongoing at the time of submission. CONCLUSIONS: This study is a novel, randomized crossover trial designed to extend a laboratory-based controlled study design into the free-living environment. By using digital health technologies to monitor and prompt participants in real time, we will be able to rigorously test the effects of breaking up sedentary behavior over a longer period of time than is seen in traditional laboratory-based studies. Our innovative approach will leverage the strengths of highly controlled laboratory and free-living experiments to achieve maximal internal and external validity. The research team’s multidisciplinary expertise allows for a broad range of biological measures to be sampled, providing robust results that will extend knowledge of both the acute and chronic real-life effects of increased standing and LPA in sedentary office workers. The WorkWell Study uses a rigorous transdisciplinary protocol that will contribute to a more comprehensive picture of the beneficial effects of breaking up sitting behavior. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04269070; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04269070 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/45133