New Study Reveals Fidgeting Can Promote Good Health
As important as it is to get good exercise, it’s not very compatible with daily routines. Work and play alike can involve sitting in a chair and staring at screens for hours on end, which likely only makes a bad situation worse. Luckily, there may be a simple counter to all of that — at least, if a person is willing to fidget enough.
A years-long study examined the lives of more than twelve thousand women in the UK. When the time came to gather the results — from participants who joined as early as 1999 — the women were organized into three groups based on the amount of fidgeting they did. The study suggested that those who sat for more than seven hours a day had a thirty percent higher chance to die than those who sat for less time; still, those who fidgeted a high or even medium amount didn’t have to worry about that increased likelihood.
Right now, there isn’t an ironclad reason for why fidgeting helps as much as it does. The current theory is that fidgeting helps offer some activity instead of none at all, so that even tiny motions can be beneficial. It’s not as if that can replace exercise wholesale, but at the very least, it looks like fidgeting can offer up a bit of relief.
