Walking, running, sprinting, strolling, meandering--all good.  Sitting--bad.  Marathons, hours of ashtanga yoga, Cross-fit, basketball on the weekends--all good.  Sitting--still bad.  Just standing--good.  Sitting--not.  Turns out sitting is just plain bad for us.  We sit in office chairs, couches, toilets, and car seats.  Sitting is our most common waking activity and now has spawned the adage:  "Sitting is the new smoking".

Not only is sitting sedentary, contributing to muscle atrophy, obesity and diabetes,  according to Andrea LaCroix, PhD, director of the Women's Health Center of Excellence at the University of California, San Diego, 'It has been linked to cardiovascular events like heart attack, heart disease death, overall death, and death from cancer."  Yes, many people sit up to 8 hours a day, followed by a hour in their car, then dinner on the couch with Master of None on NetFlix.  Even if you worked in an hour of exercise during your lunch break or stopped at the gym on the way home, it may not undo the 8 hours at your desk.  

New studies have shown that people's telomeres (tiny caps on the ends of DNA strands, which shorten and fray as a cell ages) improved with less sitting. Telomere length shortens with obesity and illness while good health tends to preserve telomere length.  Researchers took 2 groups of participants and compared the telomere length between those that began a moderate exercise program and sat less as compared to the volunteers who continued their normal activities.

You guessed it. The telomeres in the volunteers who were sitting the least had lengthened while the control group telomeres generally were shorter.  Furthermore, there was little correlation between exercise and telomere length.  In fact, according to the study, "The volunteers in the exercise group who had worked out the most during the past six months tended now to have slightly less lengthening and even some shortening, compared to those who had exercised less but stood up more."  The researchers concluded that reducing sedentary time has lengthened the telomeres and exercise had contributed very little.  

There's more. Scientists wondered whether merely standing up was sufficient to increase health. They took a look at a large database of self-reported information about physical activity among Canadian adults andnoted the amount of time that the men and women had reported standing on most days over the course of a decade.  They crosschecked the information against the death records.  Sure enough, mortality rates declined at higher levels of standing.  

If you find that you must sit more than you'd like, find a way to stand. My friend, Karen, makes it a habit to stand when she's on the phone.  There are standing desks, bicycle desks and nordic track desks.  Avoid sitting during your lunch hour and breaks. Perhaps you drink your Four Barrel coffee standing up, like the Italians!

The study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine here:  http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2014/07/30/bjsports-2013-093342.short?g=w_bjsm_ahead_tab.