Significant body of research has already established a connection between sitting for long periods of time and a number of health issues, including but not limited to obesity, metabolic syndrome, increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels. Furthermore, too much sitting also increases the likelihood of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Sitting is becoming the new smoking. Spending more than just 6 hours a day sitting (office work, or gaming on a PC) drives up blood pressure and places you at a greater risk for diabetes and depression. People with diagnosed chronic illnesses see an increase in their symptoms.
Most people seems to think that they are out of danger because they go to the gym 2-3 times a week. This is simply not true. Regular exercise isn’t enough to counteract the dangers of all the sitting we do. And there is a lot of sitting going on: Americans average 9.5 hours of sitting per day (that’s more than sleeping – 7.7 hours). If sitting is really the new smoking, that’s a lot of of it.
Hopefully the overly serious opening hasn’t chased you away, as here is a cool infographic to show you exactly how sitting is killing you:
