Exercise won’t make up for too much sitting

Beware, couch potatoes: The evidence is piling up that too much sitting can take a serious toll on your health.

A new study links sitting for prolonged periods of time to increased risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and early death — even in people who get regular exercise.

“Even if you do a half an hour or an hour or of exercise every day doesn’t give us the reassurance that sitting for the other 23 hours is ok. In fact, it’s not,” said Dr. David Alter of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, one of the authors of the study.

The study, published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine, is based on a review and analysis of previous research. It found that the health hazards seem to be greatest for people who sit 8 or 9 hours a day. The impact was even more pronounced in people who did not exercise regularly.

The average person spends more than half their waking hours sedentary, doing such things as working at a computer, watching TV or sitting in traffic. But Alter says there are some simple steps anyone can take to incorporate more activity into their day.

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He suggests standing up and taking a quick, 1- to 3-minute break every half hour or so throughout the day. Standing burns twice as many calories as sitting. Some offices have taken this to heart and given workers standing desks to help boost their health and fitness levels while they work.

At the software company Opower in Virginia, 70 percent of employees have standing desks. Carleigh Graves is one of them, although she admits it was a little tough to get used to. “The first week of standing was challenging, my feet hurt,” she told CBS News. “But I don’t feel any pain anymore.”

Alter suggests setting small, achievable goals and building up stamina slowly. He tells patients to start by cutting their sitting time by 15 to 20 minutes per day. Over time, aim for 2 to 3 fewer sedentary hours per day.

An editorial published in conjunction with the new study called the significance of its findings “far-reaching.” “Sedentary behavior is ubiquitous,” the authors write. “Society is engineered, physically and socially, to be sitting-centric.” But now, as the scientific evidence accumulates, “governments and professional bodies around the world are updating physical activity guidelines to reflect this new understanding that too much sitting can be hazardous to health.”