Too Much Sitting Is Killing You (Even If You Exercise) People who sit too much every day are at an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and shorter life spans, even if they exercise, a new study finds.
Whether tending our crops or hunting wild boar, most of our lives as humans were lived on our feet. But with the advent of TV, computers, and the desk job, we’re sitting down more than ever before in history: 9.3 hours a day, even nore time than we spend sleeping(7.7 hours).
Sit, Sit, And More Sitting!
Once the working day ends, we’ll sit on, or in, whatever it was that got to us our jobs earlier that morning, and head off home. After a bit of activity preparing, eating, and cleaning up post-dinner, the majority of hard-working folks will probably sit, slouch, or lay on a comfy chair or sofa.
We may even fall asleep for an hour or so – exhausted from all the day’s sitting!
We now live in a world where the number of sit-down jobs is increasing exponentially. So many of us in the twenty-first century will be sitting down at a desk, production line, vehicle, or some machine.
Come lunchtime we’ll more than likely go and sit somewhere else to eat and unwind until it’s time to go back and continue sitting at our posts.
>> If Sitting is the Problem, what’s the Solution?
So we need to reverse our thinking if we’re to break this ever-increasing dependency on the seat. In short, men in midlife (and older) have to move more if they are well enough to do so. It is – after all – a choice investment in long-term health and wellbeing. Some options might be:
Why drive when it’s quite feasible to walk or cycle to a destination?
Why take the lift or escalators to low floors when there are stairways?
Why put off going somewhere or doing something if it doesn’t involve a seat?
Dr. James Levine M.D., Ph.D., an obesity expert for the Mayo Clinic, says this:
“There should never be an hour that you are sitting down. You need to be moving every hour. Being chained to the chair is killing millions. Just going to the gym is not enough!”
Quite often, sitting becomes a bad habit that a lot of us guys acquire as we grow older. More often than not we don’t even know we’ve become addicted to the chair. And whenever we do find ourselves standing, we start looking around for a seat so that we can take the weight off our feet! Habitually we’ll do anything to avoid movement and not even realise we’re doing it.