The Most Dangerous Thing We Do Each Day

Dr. James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in the area of “inactivity research.”   He recently detailed in a piece in the New York Times risks inherent with all the sitting we do each day.[i]

Dr. Levine posed a question in a 1999 study, “Why do some people who consume the same amount of food as others gain more weight?”  Six years later, with the help of the motion-tracking underwear, his group discovered the answer. “The people who didn’t gain weight were unconsciously moving around more.”  They hadn’t started exercising more — that was prohibited by the study. “On average, the subjects who gained weight sat two hours more per day than those who hadn’t.”[ii]

Researchers from the American Cancer Society tracked the health of Americans between 1992 and 2006.  They found that men who spent six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting had “an overall death rate about 20% higher than man who sat for 3 hours or less.”[iii]

Yikes.  I was counting up the amount of time I sit each day as I read this article.

A related study Published in Circulation looked at 9,000 Australians and found that for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day the risk of dying rose by 11%.[iv]

A researcher at the University of South Carolina similarly found that "Those who were sitting more were substantially more likely to die.”[v]  More specifically, he found that men who reported more than 23 hours a week of sedentary activity had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than those who reported less than 11 hours a week of sedentary activity.  And many of these men routinely exercised.”[vi]

Experts confirm the obvious. "We just aren't really structured to be sitting for such long periods of time, and when we do that, our body just kind of goes into shutdown."[vii]

Dr. Toni Yancey, author of Instant Recess: Building a Fit Nation 10 Minutes at a Time, offers readers a guide to integrating activity into the corporate boardroom, school classroom and even at sporting events.  Yancey recommends a few minutes of movement every hour.  And she suggests sitting on an exercise ball instead of a desk chair, adding that it helps strengthen the core while improving balance and flexibility.

It may not sound like much, these types of mini-breaks, just one minute long throughout the day, may actually make a difference. “You can simply stand up… wiggle around, take a few steps back and forth, march in place.”[viii]

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[i] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1&ref=nutrition

[ii] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1&ref=nutrition

[iii] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1&ref=nutrition

[iv] Circulation. 2010 Jan 26;121(3):384-91. Epub 2010 Jan 1

[v] http://m.npr.org/story/135575490?url=/2011/04/25/135575490/sitting-all-day-worse-for-you-than-you-might-think

[vi] http://m.npr.org/story/135575490?url=/2011/04/25/135575490/sitting-all-day-worse-for-you-than-you-might-think

[vii] http://m.npr.org/story/135575490?url=/2011/04/25/135575490/sitting-all-day-worse-for-you-than-you-might-think

[viii] http://m.npr.org/story/135575490?url=/2011/04/25/135575490/sitting-all-day-worse-for-you-than-you-might-think