There are countless articles talking about how spending hours upon hours sitting down shortens your life span. The alarming thing is, this is still true regardless of how much you exercise on the side!

Let me reiterate this point. Take two people with 8-hour desk jobs. One runs a few miles a day after work. The other doesn’t exercise at all. Both will have shortened life spans due to the hours of sitting. Will the runner outlive the non-active guy? Probably. The point is that both could live longer if they weren’t sitting so much.

What is it about sitting that is so bad for you? As soon as you sit down, your muscle activity drops to about 1 calorie per minute. The extended lack of activity decreases the effectiveness of insulin and increases your triglyceride levels. Long-term sitting day after day also leads to loss of bone density, high cholesterol, and increased cancer risk.

You really need to break up your sitting marathons as often as you can. According to this article, getting up and standing awhile at least once an hour can help counteract the cumulative effects of sitting.

I personally try to do so every 20 minutes. When I’m coding and concentrating on solving problems, time often gets away from me, so I’ve installed a little reminder program on my computer to pop a little message every 20 minutes to remind me to take a break. I chose 20 minutes rather than 30 or 60 minutes mostly to alleviate eye strain from staring at the screen so long. It’s important to look away every 20 minutes to prevent headaches from forming. So if I’m giving my eyes a break, I might as well get up and get my juices flowing again.