Most of us spend our days on our behinds — and it’s killing us
By Selene Yeager
You might not want to take the following stat sitting down: According to a poll of nearly 6,300 people by the Institute for Medicine and Public Health, it's likely that you spend a stunning 56 hours a week planted like a geranium — staring at your computer screen, working the steering wheel, or collapsed in a heap in front of your high-def TV. And it turns out women may be more sedentary than men, since they tend to play fewer sports and hold less active jobs.
Even if you think you have an energetic lifestyle, sitting is how most of us spend a good part of our day. And it's killing us — literally — by way of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. All this downtime is so unhealthy that it's given birth to a new area of medical study called inactivity physiology, which explores the effects of our increasingly butt-bound, tech-driven lives, as well as a deadly new epidemic researchers have dubbed "sitting disease."
The modern-day desk sentence
"Our bodies have evolved over millions of years to do one thing: move," says James Levine, M.D., Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and author of "Move a Little, Lose a Lot." "As human beings, we evolved to stand upright. For thousands of generations, our environment demanded nearly constant physical activity."
Your body's big enemy? You’re sitting on it
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