Detriments of Prolonged Sitting

Prolonged sitting is harmful to your health and promotes chronic diseases, including obesity, high cholesterol and diabetes. Within 90 seconds of rising from sitting to standing, the muscular and cellular systems that process blood sugar, triglycerides and cholesterol — which are mediated by insulin — are activated. All of these effects are activated simply by carrying your body-weight upon your legs.

Even if you get 150 minutes of exercise each week, there’s still an association of sitting with waist circumference, systolic blood pressure and glucose levels — a phenomenon referred to as “active couch potato syndrome”.

At bare minimum, avoid sitting for more than 50 minutes out of every hour. What ever you can do to move your body, even for just a short period of time .... walk to the mailbox, do some squats, walk around the block on a break ......