How many hours a day do you sit at your job? How much healthier
would you be if you could stand, or walk while you work? A new
study says you could live longer. The British Medical Journal’s
BMJ Open has published research that finds sitting for more than
three hours a day can trim your life expectancy by two years,
even if you are active and don’t smoke. The research “elevates
sedentary behavior as an important risk factor, similar to
smoking and obesity,” said (study researcher Peter) Katzmarzyk
(of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge,
La.) Other studies have found our culture of sitting may be
responsible for about 173,000 cases of cancer each year. Because
U.S. adults spend, on average, between 4.5 and five hours a day
sitting down, a significant shift in the population’s behavior
would be needed to have an effect on life expectancy, Katzmarzyk
said. This might be achieved through changes at the workplace,
such as the use of standing desks, and by watching less TV, he
said. Katzmarzyk