I wish I could find a way to prop my laptop on my elliptical trainer.
That's because researchers in Melbourne, Australia report that the more time we spend sitting still, the greater our risk of death.
After tracking 8,800 people for an average of six years, they discovered that people who watched more than four hours of TV a day increased their risk of dying from any cause by 46 percent, and dying from cardiovascular disease by 80 percent.
While researchers focused on TV watchers because they are most likely to sit still for extended periods, the real culprit isn't television--it's the act of sitting still for long periods of time.
And it doesn't seem to matter if you get exercise at other times of the day, because study participants said they averaged 30 to 45 minutes of exercise daily.
"It's not the sweaty type of exercise we're losing," said David Dunstan of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in a news release. "It's the incidental moving around, walking around, standing up and utilizing muscles that [doesn't happen] when we're plunked on a couch in front of a television."
Or in my case, sitting with clients...or parked in front of my computer. Just writing this makes me want to get up and move around.
