NPR

Get Off The Couch Baby Boomers, Or You May Not Be Able To Later

If you sit too much during middle age — at work and at home — your ability to exercise or even walk in late decades is at risk, a study hints. And, of course, your risk of heart disease climbs, too.
Young bodies may more easily rebound from long bouts of sitting, with just an hour at the gym. But research suggests physical recovery from binge TV-watching gets harder in our 50s and as we get older.

Count the number of hours you sit each day. Be honest.

"If you commute an hour in the morning and hour after work — that's two hours, and if you sit at an eight-hour-a-day desk job that's 10," says epidemiologist Loretta DiPietro of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

"Then you come home at, say, 6 p.m., eat dinner and crash into your recliner for another three to four hours," says DiPietro. "That's 13 to 14 hours of sitting."

Being immobile like that for many hours each day does more than . DiPietro and her colleagues have good evidence

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