NPR

Home For The Holidays? Get Off The Couch!

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, research 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.

Editor's Note: This encore story, originally published in September, seems especially relevant this week, as we all relax (aka sit! binge-watch! eat!) for the holidays.

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

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