Dr. Mark Tremblay was interviewed by Macleans.ca for the story, “Why sitting is a dangerous health threat: It’s tied to obesity, diabetes and cancer–and exercise won’t make up for it,” published on Tuesday.

From the story:

Like obesity or smoking before it, sitting is the new plague, and not just because it can lead to deadly blood clots. Alarmingly, the latest research links it to obesity, diabetes and the major killers, heart disease and cancer. And exercising the recommended half-hour a day, while beneficial, isn’t enough to stave off the ill effects of sitting. “Thirty minutes is two per cent of your day,” says Mark Tremblay, director of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO) at the CHEO Research Institute in Ottawa. “What about the other 98 per cent?”

The latest and most powerful warning comes from a team at the University of Leicester and Loughborough University in England. In a meta-analysis of 18 studies (which included almost 800,000 participants), they found that sitting for long periods increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease and death. And, as Tremblay suggested, sitting was shown to be a risk independent of exercise—meaning that a person who regularly visits the gym is still in danger if he or she is inactive for most of the rest of the day.

Click here to read the full story.