Study Finds Too Much Sitting Increases Risk of Death

The Fonze was wrong when he told us all to “sit on it.” In fact, sitting has become one of the biggest health risks according to recent studies. Prolonged sitting has been linked to an increased risk for diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Dr. David Alter, a scientist from the University Health Network in Toronto, led a recent study on the effects of sitting on the body. “More than one-half of an average person’s day is spent being sedentary — sitting, watching television or working at a computer. Our study finds that despite the health-enhancing benefits of physical activity, this alone may not be enough to reduce the risk for disease.”

Dr. Alter is not alone in his findings. Other researchers looked at 47 studies that examined the relationship between sitting and mortality, and according to the findings published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, people who sit for long periods of time were 24% more likely to die from health problems compared with people who sat less.

Although none of the 47 studies used a standard cutoff to determine and define exactly how much sitting was too much, Aviroop Biswas, the study’s lead researcher has said, “If you sit more than 8 hours [a day], that’s probably linked to a lot of the negative health effects.” Too much sitting was found to be linked specifically to an increased risk of lung, colon, breast, ovarian, and colorectal cancers.

Exercise Won’t Really Help You

You may be sitting there (you’re not sitting after reading the first part of this article!) thinking, rather smugly, that you needn’t worry about the fact you sit all day at work and while binge-watching “The Walking Dead” because you exercise an hour a day five days a week. But, as the researchers found, exercising does not completely counteract the risks that come from sitting all day. Yes, exercising is obviously beneficial, but the findings suggest it only makes us about one-third less likely to die from disease. That still leaves a whole two-thirds to worry about.

How Can Something That Feels So Good Be So Bad for You?

Much of life calls for sitting. We sit to eat. Sit for a meeting. Sit in our cars. Sit at our desks. We are told to “Please have a seat” and “Please wait to be seated.” We talk about who’s going to sit next to whom at the wedding reception and who sat next to us on the plane. We are a society obsessed with sitting. And for many years it seemed a perfectly reasonably comfortable and innocent past time.

So what is it about sitting, exactly, that is so bad for us? And why does it increase our risk for major health problems? It seems that our bodies use energy in a completely different way when we sit compared to when we stand. All of our organs and internal systems work differently when we stand, even our brain, and we burn calories at a different rate and store them in different ways.

When we sit for prolonged periods of time, day after day, we are essentially telling our bodies to shut off the mechanisms that allow us to burn calories and use energy efficiently. When this happens we gain weight, become diabetic, develop heart disease and a whole host of other health issues.

So What Can You Do?

As we mentioned earlier, it’s simply not enough to sit for 13 hours a day and think you’re healthy because you hop on the treadmill a few times a week. So what can you do? Do you have to stand for the rest of your life in order to be healthy?

Here are some ideas:

• Instead of calling or emailing your coworker who is sitting 20 feet from you, get up out of your chair and walk over to ask where you should go for lunch or what time the meeting is.
• Spend part of your lunch break walking. A half hour of walking is a great way to work up your appetite.
• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator not only helps you burn more calories, it takes more time which means you’ll be standing for longer. All of these minutes add up each week.
• Park farther away from stores so you’ll have to walk more. And, once inside, go up and down aisles you don’t need anything from just to get some extra standing in.
• You might gasp at this one but consider cutting down on your TV viewing time each week and doing something more active with the family like mini-golf or bowling. Not only is it healthier but you and your family will bond more.

And here’s another idea:

Approximately a year ago, two Doctors of Physical Therapy began working on a solution for the common worldwide sitting problem.

After working with various techniques for many years in a private clinical setting, they have come up with a flexible program that will help average people who sit too much.

If you sit all day like me, this is a MUST see:

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