There's more and more evidence that sitting is dangerous — here's how to counteract it

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Sitting for too long damages the heart, may harm the brain, and increases risk of death.
Researchers aren't even sure that exercise is enough to make up for the harms of sitting too much.
But taking a break can help — try to get up every 30 minutes, or for two hours out of every workday.

The more we learn about the health effects of sitting, the more it seems there's a good reason to get up and go for a walk — or a run.

A sedentary lifestyle isn't just bad for the waistline and the heart, though it certainly can cause problems there. Sitting for too long is also associated with weakening of the brain in areas associated with memory, increased risk for cancer and diabetes, and overall increased risk of an early death.

There's no way to wipe away the effects of spending eight to twelve hours a day sitting down without taking breaks. A number of studies show that even people who get vigorous exercise still suffer negative health effects associated with sitting too long.

But that doesn't mean you can't do anything to improve your long-term prognosis if your day job involves a lot of time at a desk. There are solutions, and some are easy to implement.

Exercise helps. But perhaps most important for counteracting sitting time is remembering to get up and keep moving every so often.

Here's what we know about how sitting affects the body and how to make up for the harm that our sedentary lifestyles can cause.

Scientists have started to understand just why sitting might be so bad for us. It seems to cause gradual "subclinical injury" to the heart over time.

Scientists recently discovered that people who sit more than 10 hours a day (not too hard to do for a person who spends 7 to 9 hours at a desk) have above-normal levels of proteins in their blood called troponins that heart muscle cells release when they're damaged.

If those elevated troponin levels persist chronically in people who sit too long every day, that could explain why sedentary people have a much higher risk of dying from heart disease than people who get up and move every so often throughout the day — and it may help explain why those who live sedentary lifestyles have higher rates of diseases like cancer and diabetes.

Sitting too long could be harmful in ways we're still trying to understand, potentially even causing damage in the brain.

One recent study found that healthy middle-aged and older adults between the ages of 45 and 75 who spent more time sitting had thinner brain regions in areas connected to memory formation, something that can be an early sign of cognitive decline.

It's unclear whether this sort of problem could be linked to the signs of potential heart damage that seem potentially responsible for many of the harms of a sedentary lifestyle. But it there's good reason to try to counteract those harms.

Many studies have shown that exercise alone can't compensate for the harms of sitting.

In the study showing brain changes in people who sat a lot, the amount of exercise participants got didn't seem to affect thickness of brain regions associated with memory.

Researchers associated with the American College of Sports Medicine have said that sedentary behavior is harmful in and of itself, and that while it's important to meet physical activity guidelines, doing so is not enough to eliminate the harms of sitting for long periods of time.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider