According to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, your too much of sitting can lead to the fat accumulation around the heart.

The study shows that a sedentary lifestyle may have a differential increase in fat accumulation based on activity level, the study found that the more time spent sitting, the bigger the area of fat deposited around a person’s heart.

CT scans of more than 500 people found that excess time spent sitting “was significantly related to pericardial fat around the heart,” said study lead author Britta Larsen, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of cardiovascular epidemiology at the University of California, San Diego.

Your body wasn’t built for prolonged sittings

A hundred year ago before the desk jobs started when humans were all out toiling in the fields, there was hardly anyone obese. After the arrival of computers most of you were sitting for more than ever before in the history of mankind. Generally you take sleep for about 7 to 8 hours and then work on your desks for next 8 to 10 hours. Your bodies weren’t built for that and that’s starting to take its toll.

Simply exercising might not be enough

There’s bad news for people who sit a lot but assume that they can exercise away all that pericardial fat. As per study, the regular exercise although helped in the reduction of visceral fat around the organs, but didn’t helped in the lessening of pericardial fat. Sitting more than 6 hours per day increases the risk of death up to 40% within 15 years then someone who sits for less than 3 hours even if you exercise.

How it’s happening

As soon one sits the electrical activity in the leg muscle shuts down and calories burning drops to 1 per minute.

Enzymes that help break down fat drop by 90%, making us fat the obese people sit for more than 2.5 hours per day than thin people.

After 2 hours the cholesterol level drops by 20% and after 24 hours insulin effectiveness drops 24% and the risk of diabetes increases.

Studies show that reducing sitting time helps.

What’s turning this serious problem deadly?

For most of us sitting for 8-9 hours a day at our job is inevitable, but extra sitting outside the work is in our control.

Your sitting time adds up, whether it’s at the desk in a park or in the car or while watching TV.

Those who sit three hours or more per day watching TV are 64% more likely to die from the heart disease. Each extra hour of watching TV increases 11% of the death risk.

Get off – Help your body

We are into a situation where we can’t run freely in the playing field for our whole day. A 30 minutes break for activity in the whole day is simply not enough for your body, so divide your work into hour long sections and take a break between each section. Try interrupting your sitting  sessions whenever you can by stretching, jumping, walking in small place, skipping rope, use stairs instead of elevator, and do not miss single opportunity to walk around the office.

Apart from it find a chair with good lower back support, it will automatically push your back into a healthier position creating an angle of 135 degrees between your legs and stomach put less strain on your back than hunching forward or even sitting straight

History is a vast early warning system. – Norman Cousins