Too Much Sitting Could Be Killing You, Even If You Exercise Regularly

We are living in a world that requires less physical exercise it’s like everything is made to keep up sitting down. For example, when you want to switch channels, just take the remote control and press a few buttons. When you want to go shopping, sit in front of a computer and browse the web. When you want to go somewhere, get into a car and sit in front of a wheel and drive. But what most people don’t know is that sitting down for long takes away years off your life and the damage caused cannot be reversed by exercising.

This was revealed in a study that was conducted by the American Cancer Society in 2011. The study was conducted on 120,000 people for a 14 year period and the results were shocking. The researchers found that people who sat down for 6 hours or more per day were 40{30e6b8360db511af0e1f77984c542ff30ea10c4b009d596ff6d5f40eac675d71} more likely to die during the study than those who sat less than three hours a day.

This research was later supported by a new study conducted by the Annals of International Medicine that shown that sedentary lifestyles raise the risk of developing life threatening diseases and conditions such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

How Sitting Down Ruins the Body

First, the leg muscles become completely idle because all the electrical activity shuts off. You burn fewer calories i.e. you burn only one calorie every minute. Also, the enzyme that helps you to breakdown fats declines significantly.

When you sit down for 2 hours, your good cholesterol (LDL) levels drop significantly and this can cause plaque buildup in your arteries. If you sit down for 24 hours, you risk getting diabetes because the effectiveness of insulin in your body goes down by 24 percent.

The bad news is that exercise cannot counter the effects of sitting down for long hours. The only solution is to know how much time you spend sitting down and cut that number slowly every day.

Make a habit of standing and walking around for at least a minute or two every half an hour if sitting down is part of your work.




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Source: Health Tips