Another study shows that sitting is really, really, really bad for your health. Please, just get a standup desk!



A study of more than 200,000 Australians adds to the growing body of evidence that people who sit the most die the soonest. It also found that you can't exercise this effect away, though exercise does help reduce it greatly.

The study's simple message is that spending more time standing and less time sitting prolongs life.

But while the death risk was much lower for anyone who exercised five hours a week or more, it still rose as these active people sat longer.

It is now well accepted that too much sitting is unhealthy. Studies in the last few years have found that death risks rise when people watch spend more leisure time in front of a computer screen or TV or simply sit too much.

The current study took a more direct approach, looking at the relationship of total daily sitting time to the likelihood of dying within the next three years, seeking to put a number on just how harmful prolonged sitting is.

Its most striking finding was that people who sat more than 11 hours a day had a 40% higher risk of dying in the next three years than people who sat less than four hours a day. This was after adjusting for factors such as age, weight, physical activity and general health status, all of which affect the death risk. It also found a clear dose-response effect: the more people sat, the higher their risk of death.