Are You Sitting Too Much?

Here's one for you to ponder. And the sooner the better!

The Associated Press recently reported that "Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods — even if you also exercise regularly — could be bad for your health. And it doesn't matter where the sitting takes place — at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV — just the overall number of hours it occurs.

"Research is preliminary, but several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die. . . .

". . . in a study published last year that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years, researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, independently of whether or not they exercised.

"We don't have enough evidence yet to say how much sitting is bad," said Peter Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, who led the Canadian study. "But it seems the more you can get up and interrupt this sedentary behavior, the better."

"Figures from a U.S. survey in 2003-2004 found Americans spend more than half their time sitting, from working at their desks to sitting in cars.

"Experts said more research is needed to figure out just how much sitting is dangerous, and what might be possible to offset those effects."

Lara Lohan, senior editor at AlterNet, has some tips for dealing with this dreadful news:

Answer your morning emails via your handy smart phone while walking to work, be sure to glance up when crossing streets
Interrupt colleagues often and in person
Try to find crowded places to eat where there is standing room only
Ask your local pub to replace the tables and chairs with treadmills
And if you can't possibly trade in your desk job for a mail delivery route, try not to get too discouraged about the heaps of bad health news these days. Yes, something will surely kill you, but you don't have to take it sitting down.