(Article from Time.com)
Standing desks are in. Once the province of a few dynamic individuals like Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway and Donald Rumsfeld (O.K., two out of three ain’t bad), the stand-up desk is spreading to the world of corporate drones. And for good reason — there’s a growing body of medical evidence that hours of uninterrupted sitting can be surprisingly bad for your health.
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A 2010 editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that those who sit for prolonged periods have a higher risk of disease than those who move a muscle every now and then in a non-exercise manner, such as walking up the stairs to grab a cup of coffee.
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Researchers at the American Cancer Society found that even if you exercise nearly every day, those health benefits can be undone if you spend the rest of your time on your keister. (More at TIME.com: Is Running Barefoot Better for You?)
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Scientists at the University of Missouri have found that the act of sitting seems to shut off the circulation of a fat-absorbing enzyme called lipase.
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A study published by the American Journal of Epidemiology showed that sitting for long stretches, more than six hours a day, can make someone at least 18% more likely to die from diabetes, heart disease and obesity than those sitting less than three hours a day.
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Scientists at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana analyzed the lifestyles of more than 17,000 men and women over about 13 years, and found that people who sit for most of the day are 54% more likely to die of heart attacks.