Get up and shake that thing! Prolonged sitting poses health threat

New studies supply some confirmation that whether you're overweight or in shape, a sedentary lifestyle can cut years off your life, even if you work out multiple times a week, and whether you re overweight or trim. Last year, an American Cancer Society study of 123,000 Americans found that men who sat more than six hours per day in their leisure time had a 20 percent higher death rate than those who spent less than three leisure hours sitting down. The findings were worse for women: more than six hours of sedentary leisure time equated to a 40 percent higher death rate. Another recent study conducted by David Dunstan, Ph.D., of 9,000 Australian subjects suggests that for each additional hour of sitting in front of a TV, a person s risk of dying rises 11 percent even after controlling for other risk factors such as age, sex, smoking, hypertension and leisure-time exercise. If sitting alone poses a health risk, then the 9-to-5 office lifestyle appears troublesome.

"What has happened is that a lot of the normal activities of daily living that involved standing up and moving the muscles in the body have been converted to sitting," says Dr. Dunstan. "Technological, social, and economic changes mean that people don't move their muscles as much as they used to consequently the levels of energy expenditure as people go about their lives continue to shrink. For many people, on a daily basis they simply shift from one chair to another from the chair in the car to the chair in the office to the chair in front of the television."

But experts believe there is a solution for sedentary office workers. Simply put, finding even the smallest of ways to move around during the workday can improve your outcome. The Mayo Clinic s Dr. James Levine, for example, showed The New York Times reporter James Vlahos a human resources staffing agency in which many of the employees worked on treadmill desks, thus moving away from the chair-based lifestyle.