What Makes Sitting So Detrimental to Your Health?

By Dr. Mercola
Mounting research suggests that even if you exercise regularly, you might
still succumb to the ill effects of too much sitting.
For example, a study published last year1 concluded that adults who spend
an average of six hours a day in front of the TV will cut their life expectancy
by nearly five years, compared to someone who does not watch TV.
Another recent analysis of 18 studies found that those who sat for the
longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart
disease, compared to those who sat the least. According to lead researcher
Thomas Yates, MD:3
Even for people who are otherwise active, sitting for long stretches seems
to be an independent risk factor for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular
disease, and kidney disease.
An earlier study, published in 2009 also highlighted much of the recent
evidence linking sitting with biomarkers of poor metabolic health, showing
how total sitting time correlates with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes,
heart disease, and other prevalent chronic health problemseven if you
exercise regularly. According to the authors:
"Even if people meet the current recommendation of 30 minutes of
physical activity on most days each week, there may be significant
adverse metabolic and health effects from prolonged sitting -- the
activity that dominates most people's remaining "non-exercise"
waking hours."
Continuous Daily Activity Linked to Healthier Aging
Most recently, a Swedish study5 concluded that those who live a generally
active life have better heart health and live longer than those who remain
sedentary for most of the day. This held true even for those who didnt
engage in a regular exercise routine. As reported in the featured article:6
Based on nearly 3,900 men and women over age 60 in Stockholm, the
study adds to evidence suggesting that just sitting around may be actively
harmful, researchers say.

We have known for 60 years that physical activity is important for the
heart, said lead author Elin Ekblom-Bak... But until recently the research
has mainly focused on exercise and has "forgotten" about the background
activity that we do during daily life...
Whether someone exercises vigorously or not, it still usually only takes up a
small fraction of the day. That leaves the rest of the time for either sitting
still or engaging in non-exercise activities, like home repairs, lawn care and
gardening, car maintenance, hunting or fishing.
Avoiding the temptation to stay rooted to the couch may be
particularly important for seniors. If youre older, youd be wise to
make a concerted effort to spend more time doing low-intensity,
everyday activitiesanything, really, to cut down on the time you
spend in a seated position. In the featured study, participants who were
signed up at the age of 60 were tracked for more than 12 years, and the
findings were quite telling:
1.

Those who reported overall higher levels of daily intermittent

movement suffered fewer heart-related problems

2.

For every 100 of the sedentary people who experienced a heart attack
or stroke, only 73 of the highly active group had such an event

3.

For every 100 of the least active who died, only 70 of the most active
died

4.

Those who had high daily activity levels and engaged in a regular
exercise program had the lowest risk profiles overall

5.

Yet another recent study7 found that seniors who exercise experience
less depression, dementia, and other chronic health problems, including
diabetes and cancer. The benefit of exercise was majorincreasing the
odds of healthy aging as much as sevenfold! Best of all, even those who
didnt start exercising until they were in their later years were still able
to boost their odds threefold.

What Makes Sitting So Detrimental to Your Health?

According to David Dunstan with the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute in
Melbourne, Australia, the lack of muscle contraction caused by sitting
decreases blood flow through your body, thereby reducing the efficiency of
biological processes.

"In addition to engaging in regular health enhancing exercise, people should

be encouraged to also think what they do during the long periods in the day
in which they are not exercising," he told Reuters.8
Indeed, while regular exercise is undoubtedly important, its
becoming increasingly clear that staying activeand by that I mean
just movement, virtually any physical movement, especially standing
upas much as possible throughout the day is in all likelihood
imperative for health and longevity. While I dont discount the idea that
poor blood flow contributes to the detrimental effects of chronic sitting, I
believe theres more to it than that.
Earlier this year, I interviewed Dr. Joan Vernikos,9 former director of NASAs
Life Sciences Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, on this topic.
She presents a very interesting scientific explanation for why sitting has
such a dramatic impact on your health, and what you can do about it.
She approached the problem from a different angle than most. Curious to
find out why regular exercise does not appear to compensate for the
negative effects of prolonged sitting, her research focused on finding out
what type of movement is withdrawn by sitting. What she discovered was
astounding. She found it is the change in posture that acts against gravity
that is the most powerful, in terms of having a beneficial impact on your
health. Regularly standing up from a seated position was in fact found to be
more effective than walking! According to Dr. Vernikos:
The key to lifelong health is more than just traditional gym exercise, three
to five times a week. The answer is to rediscover a lifestyle of constant,
natural low-intensity non-exercise movement that uses the gravity vector
throughout the day.
Whats Gravity Got to Do with It?
The word gravity vector reveals Dr. Vernikos background and expertise
with anti-gravity. She was in fact one of the primary doctors assigned to
keep NASA astronauts from deteriorating in space. In an anti-gravity
situation, your body deteriorates at a far more rapid pace, and interestingly
enough, sitting for an extended period of time simulates a low-gravity type
environment for your body.
Activities such as housecleaning, rolling dough, gardening, hanging
clothes to dry, bending over to pick up a stray sock, reaching for an
item on a high shelf... all of these fall within the spectrum of

movements you would ideally engage inmore or less continuously

during daily life, from morning until night. Dr. Vernikos refers to
these types of activities as G habits.
The reason why theyre so critical for your health is that when you move,
you increase the force of gravity on your body. Again, anti-gravity
environments speed up cellular deterioration, so the key is to disengage
from the gravity vectorthis low anti-gravity situationas much as possible.
Ive previously written about the health benefits of Acceleration Training, or
Whole Body Vibration Training, in which you perform exercises on a vibrating
platform such as the Power Plate. Acceleration Training works by increasing
the force of gravity on your bodywhich is at the heart of issue, according
to Dr. Vernikos. To a lesser degree, a mini trampoline will also increase the G
forces on your body and provide similar, yet less extreme, benefits. A mini
trampoline or rebounder subjects your body to gravitational pulls ranging
from zero at the top of each bounce to two to three times the force of
gravity at the bottom, depending on how high you jump.
The problem is that our modern society and our reliance on
technology has reduced or eliminated many of these opportunities
for low-intensity movement and replaced it with sitting. Some
people have even taken to texting other family members inside the
same house instead of getting up and walking into the next room. All
of this sloth-like inactivity adds up and can take years off your life.
Based on double-blind research conducted by Dr. Vernikos, the minimum
number of times you need to interrupt your sitting in order to counteract its
cardiovascular health risks is in the neighborhood of 35 times per day.
Interestingly, and importantly, her research also shows that sitting down and
standing up repeatedly for 35 minutes does NOT have the same effect as
standing up once, 35 times over the course of the entire day. In order to be
effective, the activity needs to be spread out. This helps explain why
vigorously exercising a few times a week still isnt enough to counteract the
ill effects of daily prolonged sitting.
Simple Techniques to Counteract the Harm of Sitting
Like many of you, I too spend far too many hours a day sitting in front of my
computer and started to harvest the health deterioration of excessive sitting
in my late 40s. I gradually developed back pain and could not stand for long
periods of times without pain. I also become more rigid and less flexible.
What was really astonishing though is that this all happened in spite of
exercising six or more hours per week.

As Ive become increasingly aware of the importance of intermittent

movement , Ive incorporated a variety of strategies to counteract the ill
effects of sitting. Besides frequently interrupting your sitting, another
important factor that Ill address in the sections below is posture, as poor
posture can further worsen the detrimental effects of sitting for prolonged
periods. Personally, I decided to incorporate some posture-strengthening
strategies in combination with Dr. Vernikos recommendation to frequently
stand up:
First, to make sure I interrupt my sitting enough times each day, I use an
online timer set to go off every 15- minutes. When I do sit, I have improved
my sitting posture using two techniques from the Gokhale Method (see
below). I now alternately stretchsit and stacksit and my back pain and
flexibility have improved remarkably.
Also, while Dr. Vernikos says that simply standing up and sitting back down
may be enough to do the trick, provided its done frequently enough, if you
are already in good shape you may want to do more. I decided to take it a
step further. I add different body movements when I stand up during my 3060 second break and do something like four jump squats or one-legged
squats.
I also regularly do Foundation exercises developed by Dr. Eric Goodman. In
addition to increasing the gravitational forces on your body, these exercises
also address weakness and imbalance in your posterior chain of muscles.
Earlier this year I interviewed Dr. Goodman about his techniques, so to learn
more, I suggest listening to that interview.
The Importance of Posture
Proper posture is truly foundational for health and most of us who live in
industrialized cultures, including you, have far less than ideal posture. By
understanding the functional biomechanics of your body, you can learn to
optimize the way you move at all times. This in turn effectively prevents
aches and pains from developing, and allows for optimal circulation.
Two effective methods, mentioned above, are Foundation Training, and the
Gokhale Method, created by Esther Gokhale. Her method teaches you to
return to what she calls primal posture, which is the way your body was
designed to stand, sit, and move. For a more complete discussion and
demonstrations of her techniques, please review my previous article, The
Gokhale Method: Banish Pain by Relearning Proper Posture.
One of the key postural techniques Esther teaches is how to maintain a Jspine. Conventional advice tells you to tuck in your pelvis, which results in

an S-shaped spine. This also causes you to you lose about a third of the
volume in your pelvic cavity, which squishes your internal organs,
compromising their function. When you tack on hours of uninterrupted
sitting, its no wonder sitting can lead to so much dysfunction.
By carefully observing the posture of native peoples around the worldand
toddlers tooEsther realized that a J-shaped spine is far more natural. The
conventional S-spine is actually based on the norm of poor posture... When
you search the annals of anatomical charts of the human spine, youll find
that over time conventional medicine simply began to accept this norm as
normal, if not ideal. However, as with vitamin D levels, this is not an
instance where you want to simply fall within the norm. For optimal health,
you really want to strive for an ideal posture.
A J-spine refers to a posture where your back is straight, your lumbar
relatively flat, and your buttocks are protruding slightly, as illustrated below.
You can also find free PDF downloads describing this posture on Esthers
website, GokhaleMethod.com.10 This biomechanically correct posture allows
you to move freely, discourages pain, and allows your digestive organs to
function without restrictions or blockages.

Remember Primal Posture When Sitting, and Stand up Frequently

As mentioned, in addition to getting out of your chair frequently enoughat
least 35 times per day or moremaintaining proper posture while sitting can
also make a significant difference. Esthers method of primal sitting allows
the bones in your spine to stack properly, thereby allowing the muscles
alongside your spine to relax. Then, as you breathe, your entire spine
lengthens and settles naturally. This movement stimulates circulation and
promotes healing.
In the video below, Esther demonstrates how to use your back rest as a
traction device to help you elongate your spine while sitting. By doing this,
you will start flattening out your lumbar area, promoting a more beneficial Jspine posture.

This is an incredibly powerful and healing habit to get into and I would
strongly encourage all of you to adopt it. Remember it is not so much the 23 Peak Fitness workouts you do a week that will keep you flexible and pain
free but how you spend the bulk of your day. If you are sitting and dont
adopt a practice like this, you are looking for pain down the road. This habit
will allow you to actually stretch your spine rather than compressing it while
you are sitting. Im so grateful to have learned this exercise as it has made a
dramatic difference in my ability to move freely without pain.
Take Every Opportunity to Move Your Body
Research such as Dr. Vernikos is powerful evidence that many of the health
problems people suffer today are linked to modern lifestyle modifications
that are simply incompatible with optimal biological functioning. Fortunately,
the answer is simple. Just revert back to a lifestyle that incorporates natural
movement!
Using your body the way it was designed is one of the most powerful ways to
optimize your health. As Ive discussed in numerous occasions, high intensity
interval training (HIIT) is yet another example of this, as it mimics the way
ancient hunter-gatherers used their bodies. Modern research has also
repeatedly confirmed that HIIT outperforms traditional aerobic cardio
exercise on virtually every front.
If you have a sedentary job, standing up every 10 to 15 minutes may
compensate for the majority of the damage from sitting. Also, pay
careful attention to your posture. I recommend incorporating either
Foundation Training or the Gokhale Methodor both. When you sit,
pay attention to how you sit. And when you stand up, you can easily
turn it into an opportunity to move into a Foundation posture.
Last but not least, instead of parking yourself in front of the TV at
night, consider doing something else, or at the very least engage in
some minor activity while the TV is on.
What Makes Sitting So Detrimental to Your Health?