by Russel Donohue

Created on: November 05, 2010

That exercise will extend your life is known by all and recommended by doctors the world over. Happiness, energy, and a robust feeling are all easier to achieve with exercise. This article tells about a clinical study that proves the reason behind this common belief. In fact, the simple act of sitting 6 hours a day is demonstrated to shorten life.

It can be authoritatively said that spending most of the day sitting will shorten your life span. This statement is based on analysis of records kept between 1993 and 2006 on 120,000 people by researchers at Ochsner Health Systems in Louisiana.

When the body mass index (BMI) and smoking were removed from the 13 year study, 6 hours of sitting a day was left as a major health risk. Women that sat less than 3 hours a day had a risk of death that was 63 percent less than women that sat for 6 hours a day. Men in the study that sat 6 hours in the study had a 17 percent higher death risk than men that sat for 3 hours a day.

Early death risk was lessened with exercise, but not as much as expected. Speculative reasons for this discrepancy from the expected provided by the researchers center on the idea that as muscles are inactive for long periods of time, hormones are released affecting cholesterol and triglycerides levels in such a way that the likelihood of heart disease is increased.

Sitting for long periods of time (or other forms of inactivity) without exercise, according to other studies is also a contributor to depression and type 2 diabetes among other lifestyle diseases. Specifically, the lack of movement depresses the 'fire' of life – similar to a wood fire that is smothered with to much fuel and not enough ventilation. Exercise causes your bodies metabolism to act more energetically. This makes the fuel burn faster and more complete. In additon, certain hormone production is increased, resulting in positve influences on the heart.

Jay Brook, study author and oncologist stated in a USA Today story that "It's one more reason to get up and walk." Continuing, he says, "If you're in a job that requires sitting, that's fine, but anytime you can expend energy is good. That's the key."

This study backs up the assertion that people are meant to move. Until relatively recently, most people had to move and build things to create a livelyhood. The modern trend is for jobs to more and more require people to sit still to complete them, be it sitting behind a wheel, a computer screen or at a reception desk. Staying still at these tasks is truly killing you.

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