How Often You Should Pause Netflix And Get Up Off Your Ass

There seems to be a new study every week telling us that our lifestyles are killing us. Sitting down is getting a pretty bad reputation – which is disappointing, since it’s so much easier to do that moving. But scientists have discovered the best way to enjoy the best of both worlds: sitting, and not dying before you’ve even got on the property ladder. Researchers say that moving your body every half an hour, you could help to limit that damage that sitting on your arse all day does to your life expectancy. The researchers fitted 8,000 middle-aged Americans with fitness trackers, and monitored their movements over four years – with each person wearing a tracker for at least four days over a period of one week. Any deaths were tracked from 2009 to 2015. They found that, on average, the participants were inactive for 12 hours of a 16 hour waking day. Those who were inactive for 13 hours a day were 2.6 times more likely to die than those who spend 11 and a half hours a day sitting still. And the good news: the people who kept most of their bouts of inactivity to under 30 minutes at a time had the lowest risk of death. Seems to us there’s never been a better excuse for raiding the fridge after every half an hour.