Sitting at your Desk all day is Riskier than being Obese

If you think that sitting on your desk will only make you a tad bit bigger in volume, you are right, but there is more to it than just that. You could be at the brink of an early death.

A new study from the University of Cambridge has found that being sedentary may be twice as dangerous as being obese. The researchers tracked over 334, 000 people for over 12 years and they compared the activity levels as well as weights among all the subjects who had died at the time. They also calculated how the number of deaths could easily have been avoided if all the participants had engaged in more physical activity versus at a healthy weight. They determined that physical activity could easily have saved twice as many people as weight loss.

How can mere sitting be damaging?

The Study’s co-author, Soren Brage, Ph.D., head of the physical activity epidemiology program at Cambridge said that sitting increases ones risk for disease that are responsible for deaths such as heart diseases, certain types of cancers, diabetes, etc. Exercising or participating in some form of physical activity helps to protect one from these illnesses by lowering the level of blood pressure and level of fat, insulin and sugar in the blood.

So, no matter how occupied you are throughout the day, make sure that you move your body. Only 20 minutes of walking has been found to reduce the risk of early death by at least 30 percent.

Brage says, “I think it would be hard for most people to argue that they cannot find even 20 minutes in a whole day of 1,440 minutes to do something for their own health benefit. There are lots of ways to accumulate activity throughout the day, even if you are very busy. Take the stairs or park further away. It all adds up.”

The researcher also added that one does not have to call the day off after walking for 20 minutes because doubling the level of activity only leads to additional benefits.

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