Our jobs are still killing us

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It’s nice to know that, even if I ever get to retire, it won’t last long:

Maybe those of us who sit for long hours in meetings, on phone calls, and tapping away at keyboards should be getting hazard pay. New research that distills the findings of 47 studies concludes that those of us who sit for long hours raise our average risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and early death.

Even for those of us who meet recommended daily levels of exercise, sitting for long periods of time boosts our likelihood of declining health. (In fact, I just worked out intensively for 90 minutes, and am now risking life and limb to bring you this news. You’re welcome.)

To be sure, the latest research — published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine — finds that the risk of poor health “is more pronounced at lower levels of physical activity than at higher levels.”

Those who engage in regular physical activity but still spend a large proportion of their day in sedentary activity were found, on average, to be 30% less likely to die of any cause in a given period than were those who get little to no exercise. But even those who punctuate a long day of sitting with a vigorous workout were estimated to be 16% more likely to die of any cause in a given time than were those who do not sit for long.

2 thoughts on “Our jobs are still killing us

  1. New scientific research indicates that two factors outweigh all others in contracting illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, etc.
    One is diet.
    The other is genes.
    You can control the first, but the latter is what it is.
    The newest research indicates that most cancers are caused by the accidental interaction between the cells in the body. Everything inside the body plays a specific role, does a specific thing. Every so often, and nobody knows why, cells become chaotic and go where they don’t belong or split in inappropriate ways. That “accident” causes diseases, in this case cancer, that would not ordinarily have shown up.
    In the lab the researchers call this the “shit happens” effect.

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