Is Sitting the New Smoking?

Dr. James Levine, director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative and inventor of the treadmill desk, is credited with coining the phrase, “Sitting is the new smoking.”

Levine has studied the impact of sedentary lifestyle for years. Here’s his take, summed up in two sentences:

“Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death.”1

While Levine makes a dramatic case, what caught my interest most about this is the completely different way of looking at the problem of the lack of physical activity. It’s not just that we exercise too little. It’s that we are sitting entirely too much.

“But I Go to the Gym”

New research, reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine, indicates that excessive sitting is linked to increase risk of death due to all causes, even if you engage in “regular exercise”. 2

This is mind-blowing! In the health care world we have been spouting off for years that so long as you get your 30-60 minutes a day of exercise in, you’re fine–what happens in the rest of the day is not important.

It looks like we might be wrong.

Just like regular physical activity will not negate the negative effects of smoking on your body, so too won’t it erase hours of sitting in front of Netflix or trolling on Facebook.

Maybe instead of a Fitbit to track our activity, we need a “sit bit” to track our inactivity? It’s an interesting idea. If you reduce your inactivity, then by default you’d be increasing your activity.

But what do you replace inactivity with? Is this a call to spend seven hours a working out? Not at all.

Ambient Activity

What’s missing isn’t more time at the gym. It’s more ambient activity. It’s the background, low-intensity movement that has been slowly erased from our lives by remote controls, lawn mowers, clothes dryers, restaurants, and the multitude of other conveniences that allow us to be sedentary.

Want to be more active? Sure, take a walk or workout. But try taking the stairs, hanging our laundry, washing your own dishes, and cooking real food at home. Stop trying to make everything so physically easy. And for those hours at your desk? Make sure you take a few short breaks during long work sessions. Or maybe even try a stand-up desk!

Too easy? You could try giving up sitting altogether for a month like this guy.