Sitting May Not be the “New Smoking,” But It’s Not Good for You

In 2010, Mayo Clinic professor James Levine labeled sitting the new smoking, an overstatement with a kernel of truth.

For example, when one meta-analysis of sitting studies tried to quantify just how bad sitting is compared with smoking, smoking was definitely worse with 2,000 death per 100,000 person vs 11 for sitting glued to the chair. But those 11 matter.

In 2024, the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) published the results of a 10-year study of nearly 6,000 older women showing that those who spent more than 11 hours sitting per day had a 57 percent higher risk of death from any cause and a 78 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease compared with women who sat for fewer than nine hours per day.

This study and 300 others over the past ten years suggest two main possibilities linking sitting for hours to health problems. The first is that “when we sit, our muscles are not working and are not taking up glucose, and that can negatively affect our metabolism,” says Steve Nguyen, assistant professor in residence at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at the University of California at San Diego and lead author of the JAHA study.

The second, says Keith Diaz, Professor of Behavioral Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, is that sitting bends the legs, producing something similar to “a kink in a hose that can affect blood flow.” Over time, he adds, sitting too long may stiffen blood vessels, impeding blood flow and raising the risk of heart disease and stroke,

Happily the sitting studies and solons have four concrete suggestions offering ways to turn things around.

1. Ramp up the weekend. If a week’s work is five days at a desk, make Saturday and Sunday seriously active. Easy fixes include walking or running or even cleaning the house from end to end and top to bottom.

2. Set up an actual exercise time and plan. No big deal required. One Diaz- authored study showed that swapping 30 minutes of light activity (think walking again) for 30 minutes of sitting reduced the risk of death by nearly 20 percent for adults older than 45.

3. Move around in the chair. Frequently changing position or using one of the under-desk leg movers advertised on TV or opting for an Amazon-available version of Levine’s treadmill standing desk which enables walking at a gentle pace while working standing up are possibilities.

4. Take 5-minute breaks for a quick couple of squats or to climb a few stairs, both shown to improve/control blood pressure and lower blood sugar levels, a special benefit for folks with types 2 or 4 diabetes.

Add these movement moments to exercise already part of the day, a popular concept known as habit-stacking and the brain as well as the body will appreciate the effort. The idea that sitting for hours at a time raises the risk of dementia is nothing new, but the studies to prove it are. One such, published in March in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported data from Swedish researchers showing that replacing just one hour of passive brain work such as watching TV with active thinking such as reading was linked to a 4% lower risk for developing dementia.