Sitting All Day Long Is The Worst – Here Is Why
For many of us, our days are spent hunched over a computer screen, sitting in a car or on a bus or train, and plopped down on the couch watching Netflix with little to no standing breaks.
Evidently, this is absolutely terrible for you.
As The Los Angeles Times reported, continuous sedentary time puts you at risk for “early death,” according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study found that people who sit for long periods of time absolutely must get up and move every half an hour if they want to avoid the many health risks that stem from sedentary behavior.
Apparently, going to the gym or a yoga class just isn’t enough — repeated standing breaks throughout the day are key.
The researchers, led by Columbia University‘s Keith Diaz, examined roughly 8,000 Americans above the age of 45 using accelerometers. The results were astounding.
Over the course of 10 days, sitting or lounging accounted for 77% of the participants’ waking hours — the equivalent of 12.3 hours out of a 16-hour day.
Dr. James A. Levine who studies the health effects of sitting at the Mayo Clinic further held up the study’s findings. “If you’re sitting too much, you need to do something about it — like right now,” Levine cautioned. “Unless you get moving now, you’re in trouble later.”
Levine went further, making it clear that exercising at one point of the day simply wasn’t enough to undo the effects of sitting down for the rest of it. “No one gets away from this stuff,” Levine said. “Excess sitting, this study seems to suggest, is a death sentence.”
So there you have it, folks. Maybe it’s time to start setting some standing alerts on Google Calendar — it seems we might be glad we did.
