An international panel of experts suggested that people having desk-based jobs must stand and do some light activity for a total of four hours or a minimum of two hours throughout the day.

The expert panel was commissioned by Public Health England and the company Active Working CIC, which owns the Get Britain Standing campaign.

Gavin Bradley of Active Working CIC in Teddington, UK, said that too much of sitting is associated to poor health outcomes over some past years. But no one has ever set a baseline for how much time workers should spend on their feet each day.

Bradely said the specific recommendation might get changed as more evidence emerges, but the two- to four-hours-per-day guidance is a good starting point.

The experts in the British Journal of Sports Medicine wrote that UK office workers spend as much as 75% of their time at work just sitting down.

The panel, which included experts from several universities and research institutes in the UK, also highlighted that same as prolonged sitting long periods of standing should also be avoided.

Experts also suggested that employers must help their employees to achieve the two to four hours of standing or light activity.

Employers can adjust how and when people can take breaks that involve standing and movement, or by adopting desk designs and technologies that allow people to perform their work more easily in a standing position, the authors write.

Dr. Sebastien Chastin of Glasgow Caledonian University in the UK said, "There is good evidence now that too much sitting is associated with generally poorer health outcomes in the long run, including poor bone health, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain cancers".