September 5, 2016 – Sitting Offset

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Anchor lead: Sitting all day can be overcome, Elizabeth Tracey reports

If you have a job where you’re sitting all day, it takes about an hour of moderate exercise to offset that, a recent study estimated.  Michael Blaha, a preventive cardiology expert at Johns Hopkins, says it’s helpful to think of how sedentary your lifestyle is, as well as how much exercise you get.

Blaha: I tell my patients to think of both of those things separately.  Are you getting enough physical activity, and are you sitting too much?  A very common scenario these days is someone might go home and exercise three or four days per week, but the rest of the week be sitting the entire day, and this is bad for you.  You need to get up and walk throughout the day, get up and take walking meetings, take breaks and walk, walk during phone calls, make sure that your body isn’t in a low metabolic state, resting, through most of the day.   :27

Blaha says the negative health impact of prolonged sitting is being revealed as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and earlier death that may be as powerful as cigarette smoking or obesity, so finding ways to integrate movement into your day is critical to good health.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.