Is Sitting The Most Dangerous Thing You Do?

April 18, 2011 8:29 am 6 comments

Is sitting the most dangerous thing you do? James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, thinks it may be, depending on how much of it you do. Levine's concerns, laid out in this piece in the New York Times, stem from years of research suggesting that the more you sit, the less you live. The Times reports, for example, that when researchers from the American Cancer Society tracked the health of 123,000 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 that was about 20 percent higher than the men who sat for three hours or less. The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher. Wait, it gets worse: Another study, published last year in the journal Circulation, looked at nearly 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 percent.

Read more in the New York Times.

6 Comments

  • If you do to much you die! If you do nothing you die! So now we know that we are going to die! Now the plain is not to do to much or to little. But! who knows for sure how much is enough? Are how much is to little? Now that is the question? Here is the answer: When you were born,you cried and the world rejoiced.Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice! I love it! “No God,NO Peace,Know God,Know Peace!”Everyone Have A Blessed Day!PS:Don’t worry,it happens to everybody,we were borned to die.

  • (Dying) You were born to die! Sitting,standing,running are walking of course kneeling would be better.But one thing for sure,you will die but not before your time. It is appointed to man once to die,and after that the judgement.Your days are numbered,just like the hair on your head.To little of this to much of that has nothing to do with it. God wrote your time to live and to die in His Book before the world began. Its already set in stone so to speak.”When you were born you cried and the world rejoiced.Live your life so that when you die,the world cries and you rejoice!”

  • Life is terminal, It doesn’t matter what we do. It’s just a question of when, where and how. PTL

  • ok bill have a nice day
    unless you die
    then we rejoice

  • I rather be doing something I like and usually that involves moving around. I know some people think the ideal life is to sit around doing nothing. Just continuously kicking back. For me to enjoy relaxing I must have done something to relax from.

  • What about those who do a lot of work sitting down? Let’s say for example, artists, those who do a lot of encoding in the office, or maybe web designers? Do the risks go down if it’s balanced out with regular exercise?

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