Yahoo Finance Sitting down for more than 30 minutes at a time is killing you - so get up every half hour
Your bottom is killing you – or, more specifically, your habit of sitting on it for long periods of time every day.
But a new study suggests there might be a way to offset some of the risks of a sedentary lifestyle – getting up every 30 minutes for a small bout of exercise.
The researchers, led by Columbia University researcher Keith Diaz, tracked the activities of 8,000 Americans over 45, using a wearable accelerometer device.
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The researchers found that the test subjects sit down for a shockingly large percentage of each day – 12.3 hours over a 16-hour waking day, around 77%.
But after tracking subjects for four years, they found that people who get up every 30 minutes were the least likely to have died during the period of the study.
The researchers warn that sitting down is risky, full stop – but making the effort to get up is ‘the least risky’, the researchers write.
The researchers write, ‘Accumulation of large volumes of sedentary time is a hazardous health behavior regardless of how it is accumulated.’
