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Sitting All Day May Shorten Your Life—Here's How to Counteract It

  • Fran Kritz
  • May 19
  • 2 min read

Don’t get too comfortable in your chair. Sitting for too long during the day can compromise your health and shorten your lifespan. 


A 2024 study in Taiwan found that people with sedentary jobs had a 34% higher risk of dying from heart disease and 16% higher risk of death from any cause, compared to people who didn’t sit much at work. Other studies have shown that even moderate exercise cannot offset the harm of sitting all day.


Why Sitting All Day Is So Harmful

Research has linked physical inactivity to biomarkers of chronic low-grade inflammation. This can lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and impaired kidney function.


Since people who work long hours at a desk job often share similar characteristics with those who have a sedentary lifestyle, they may experience the same health risks.


Another study published last year found that older women who sat for 11.6 hours or more a day had an 57% higher risk risk of death from any cause than did women who spent less than 9.3 hours a day, even if they did some high-intensity exercise.


“There are vascular effects from sitting too long and blood starts to pool in your extremities, meaning that the body is not activated to move the blood around as much,” said Andrea Z. LaCroix, PhD, the senior author of the study and distinguished professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Diego.


How to Minimize the Harms of Prolonged Sitting

Movement supplies the body with oxygen, LaCroix said. “For example, just going from sitting to standing improves blood pressure,” she added.


You can get up to walk to the kitchen or to the mailbox in between screen time. Or, you can set up a stopwatch to remind yourself to stand or walk around for five minutes every so often.

“You raise your heart rate simply by going from sitting to standing, and if you stroll, your heart rate goes up even more,” LaCroix said. “What I want to communicate is that people need to do whatever they can to stand up more often.”


How Often to Get Up From Sitting

LaCroix and her colleagues are now studying how frequently people should get up from their seated position to reduce health risks.


“The optimal interval to sit before standing again may only be 20 minutes,” she said.

While researchers are not yet certain what the optimal frequency is to interrupt sitting, LaCroix said getting up three times each hour is better than only getting up once per hour.

Ultimately, you should incorporate patterns of behavior that can reduce your total sitting time.

“Unless we make standing up and being active intentional, it’s hard not to keep sitting for a long time,” said Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, MD, MS, chair of preventive cardiology at the Mayo Clinic.


Lopez-Jimenez said a treadmill desk could be a good option, but you can also try something simple, such as moving your trash can to as far away as possible so you have to regularly get up to throw away trash.


He also recommends having stretch bands and light weights in rooms where you sit so when you take a timed break you have equipment to use that can raise your heart rate.


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