Study links prolonged chair time for workers to early death

If you’re sitting down, you might want to stand up while reading this.

Building on a growing body of evidence about the dangers of the modern sedentary workplace and lifestyle, a team of researchers has found that long periods of uninterrupted sitting can lead to earlier death — regardless of how much a person exercises and even when accounting for age, gender and other factors. The survey, considered one of the largest of its kind, was published Monday in a scholarly medical journal.

Dr. Keith Diaz, the lead author of the study and the director of the Exercise Testing Laboratory at Columbia University, said the most surprising findings were that it wasn’t just the total number of hours of sitting accumulated over the day, but that uninterrupted sitting over long periods such as 60 to 90 minutes, increased the risk for early death.

“This finding I think will help shift our understanding about the risks of sitting by showing that to reduce the harmful consequences of sitting one needs to both decrease the overall time they spend sitting and take frequent movement breaks when they do sit,” Dr. Diaz told The Washington Times in an email.

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