Sick of sitting

Abstract

Sitting too much kills. Epidemiological, physiological and molecular data suggest that sedentary lifestyle can explain, in part, how modernity is associated with obesity, more than 30 chronic diseases and conditions and high healthcare costs. Excessive sitting--sitting disease--is not innate to the human condition. People were designed to be bipedal and, before the industrial revolution, people moved substantially more throughout the day than they do presently. It is encouraging that solutions exist to reverse sitting disease. Work environments, schools, communities and cities can be re-imagined and re-invented as walking spaces, and people thereby offered more active, happier, healthier and more productive lives.

Fig. 1

Hypothetical workplace energy expenditures for (a) The chair-locked worker who sits most of the day; (b) the NEATthusiast who converts half of their six,½-hour meetings to walking meetings, parks a little farther away from the office, and takes 10-minute ‘active breaks’ during the work day and a brief stroll at lunch time; and (c) the NEATthlete who conducts all work meetings while walking, has a chairless desk, takes a ½ hour walk at lunchtime and cycles to work