Prolonged periods of time spent sitting can sometimes be unhealthy, but these negative effects can largely be offset by an hour every day of exercise.
A new study followed 1,005,791 subjects for up to 18 years. Overall, time spent sitting was correlated with risk for mortality. However, those subjects who exercised for at least an hour every day did not have an increased risk despite large amounts of time spent sitting.
Conclusions
Many people have claimed that sitting has terrible health effects. Some have even called sitting the “new smoking”. In reality, however, I think that it is actually a lack of exercise that is the serious problem. For people who are exercising regularly, I am not convinced that sitting is as harmful as often claimed.
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