All the money in the world can’t buy you back good health.
– Reba McEntire

Do you sit in an office chair for more than six hours a day? Very much common with designers and animators. Then here are some disturbing facts: Your risk of heart disease has increased by up to 64 percent. You’re shaving off seven years of quality life. You’re also more at risk for certain types of cancer. Simply put, sitting is killing you. That’s the bad news. The good news: It’s easy to counteract no matter how lazy you are.
The “Sitting Is Killing You”. Numerous studies have pointed to the health risks of sitting all day,our bodies weren’t made to sit all day. Sitting for long periods of time, even with exercise, has a negative effect on our health. What’s worse, many of us sit up to 15 hours a day. That means some of us spend the bulk of our waking moments on the couch, in an office chair, or in a car.

Sitting at your desk all day is killing you whether or not you exercise, which is why so many…

Right after you sit down, the electrical activity in your muscles slows down and your calorie-burning rate drops to one calorie per minute. This is about a third of what it does if you’re walking. If you sit for a full 24-hour period, you experience a 40 percent reduction in glucose uptake in insulin, which can eventually cause type 2 diabetes.

Within five days of changing to a sedentary lifestyle, your body increases plasma triglycerides (fatty molecules), LDL cholesterol (aka bad cholesterol), and insulin resistance. This means your muscles aren’t taking in fat and your blood sugar levels go up, putting you at risk for weight gain. After just two weeks your muscles start to atrophy and your maximum oxygen consumption drops. This makes stairs harder to climb and walks harder to take. Even if you were working out every day the deterioration starts the second you stop moving.
After a year, the long term effects of sitting can start to manifest subtly. According to this study by Nature, you might start to experience weight gain and high cholesterol. Studies in woman suggest you can lose up to 1 percent of bone mass a year by sitting for over six hours a day.

Sitting for over six hours a day for a decade or two can cut away about seven quality adjusted life years (the kind you want). It increases your risk of dying of heart disease by 64 percent and your overall risk of prostate or breast cancer increases 30 percent.
Happlily, you only need to do two things to counter the effects of sitting all day:

• Remember to stand once an hour.
• Get about 30 minutes of activity per day.

If you are an office worker sitting in front of a computer, an Australian study suggests short breaks from sitting once an hour can alleviate most of the problems described above.

Of course, an office worker doesn’t always have thirty minutes to spare,you can break up that thirty minutes throughout the day.
The main reason you want to shoot for the ten minute chunks is because you’re creating a mini-stress in your body that helps increase your endurance. In the real world, this means you won’t get tired halfway up the stairs. Think of it this way: you don’t train for a marathon by sprinting for ten minutes every day. Instead, you increase your endurance with longer jogs. The same goes for daily activity, you want to sustain activity for long enough to make it useful in your daily life.
Let’s look at how you can estimate your daily activity and make sure you get out of the office chair throughout the day. Photo by cell105.

The first thing to do is track how much activity you get in a regular day. The first step is to take a 30-minute walk and see how many steps you take.

Next, you want to find a baseline of your daily activity. Start using the pedometer when you wake up in the morning and keep it in your pocket until you go to bed. This will give you an estimate of your regular daily activity.
If you’re well under your target exercise range. A few simple changes to your daily behavior will help you reach your goal. Here are a few ideas for how to do it without really trying:

• Park near the back of the parking lot.
• Stand up to visit the file cabinet instead of rolling your chair.
• Walk over and talk to a coworker instead of emailing them.
• Take the scenic route to the bathroom instead of the most direct.

If you are a freelancer and work from home, You have to make a more concentrated effort to meet these goals.

Meeting your target activity level is just the first step. The second part is much simpler and only requires you stand up now and again.
We know that if you stand up for just one or two minutes every hour, it can reduce the negative effect of sitting all day. Technically, you don’t even have to move, the act of standing alone helps. When you’re in the moment and working hard, it’s difficult to remember. Set an alarm for yourself

If the alarm isn’t enough, you can download dedicated software to remind you.

It’s up to you how you use these micro-breaks. You don’t even have to move if you don’t want to, but if you want to get a little activity in that minute, here’s a quick way to do it without leaving your desk area:

• Stand up.
• March in place for twenty seconds.
• Reach down and try to touch your toes for twenty seconds.
• Wander around and pick up or reorganize for the last twenty seconds (eventually your desk area may even be clean).

The moral here is two-fold: stand up once an hour and get at least 30 minutes of activity in a day. That’s it. Unless you’re overweight, you don’t have to start exercising or going to the gym to counteract the negative effects of sitting. You just have to make sure you’re moving throughout the day.