The Least Healthy Way to Sit

Too much sitting around is bad for you—that’s, by now, a familiar refrain after several years of research findings. It’s not just the absence of exercise; when you don’t contract your muscles for several hours at a time, negative metabolic changes start to happen that can’t be counteracted with a bike ride.

But is all sitting the same? Is burrowing into the sofa to watch TV the same as sitting at your desk at work? That’s what a new study from researchers at several universities, led by Columbia University’s Keith Diaz, tried to find out in a new study published in The International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

The study involved 3,410 African American adults in Jackson, Mississippi, who completed a series of surveys and had the thickness of their carotid artery walls measured with ultrasound, which is a good early measure of heart-disease risk.