Sitting for long hours is harmful for health. Standing more often will help.

Do you lead a sedentary lifestyle? Are you a couch potato and spend most of your time lazing cozily in your favorite armchair? If so, your risk factors of counteracting diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and obesity are too high. The International Osteoporosis society reports that women who sit for more than 9 hours a day are 50% more likely to break a hip than those who sit less than 6 hours a day. Health concerns and occasional guilt pangs about your lifestyle might probably drive you to reserve a fixed period during the day for some kind of exercise. But is this enough to ward off the various risks involved with your inactive lifestyle?

New research shows that it is a misconception that actively exercising is the only way to make a healthy difference in an otherwise sedentary lifestyle. The researchers have found that physical inactivity throughout the day stimulated disease-promoting processes, and that exercising, even for an hour a day, was not sufficient to reverse the effect. What you do in your waking period during the day and when you are not actively exercising also counts. The solution that they recommend is that you should stand and move about frequently while doing your chores to maintain optimal metabolism throughout your waking period. They add that given the work of muscles necessary to hold the body’s weight upright, standing actually doubles the metabolic rate. So stand more, sit less and flex your muscles more often even while performing simple day-to-day tasks for good health. A fixed exercise-regimen alone cannot combat the ill-effects of prolonged sitting or an otherwise sedentary lifestyle.