PhD candidate Travis Saunders was recently quoted in NOW Magazine to discuss some of the biology that may explain the link between prolonged sitting and premature death:

“This research has mainly been done with animals, but when you sit for four to six hours, the enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (which sucks fat out of your blood and helps you take it up into your muscles) shuts down. The amount of fat in the blood goes up, and good cholesterol goes down. And the glucose transport protein that takes sugar out of your blood shuts off if you’re not using your muscles. This all happens quickly, after just a few hours of sitting. A large 12-year study found that people were more likely to die during the follow-up if they spent most of the day sitting, regardless of how much exercise they got. It’s starting to be a consistent finding.”

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