As someone who both runs fairly frequently (5-7 miles a day no less than six days a week) and spends a great deal of time sitting and typing at a computer screen, I found this frightening (via Andrew Sullivan):
The latest findings, published this week in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicate that the amount of leisure time spent sitting in front of a screen can have such an overwhelming, seemingly irreparable impact on one's health that physical activity doesn't produce much benefit.
The study followed 4,512 middle-aged Scottish men for a little more than four years on average. It found that those who said they spent two or more leisure hours a day sitting in front of a screen were at double the risk of a heart attack or other cardiac event compared with those who watched less. Those who spent four or more hours of recreational time in front of a screen were 50 percent more likely to die of any cause. It didn't matter whether the men were physically active for several hours a week — exercise didn't mitigate the risk associated with the high amount of sedentary screen time.
Here's what I found confusing about this write-up:
Another small study found that when overweight adults cut their TV time in half, they burned more calories than those who watched five hours or more a day. Children whose TV time is cut tended to eat less, but that wasn't true for adults. And the light activities adults filled their time with, like reading and playing board games, actually burned more calories than watching TV.
This sounds suspiciously like everything your parents ever told you to do instead of watching TV or playing video games. Reading a book is ultimately more productive than playing video games or watching TV, but how does it burn more calories? It's not like you're any less immobile. People tend to "bored eat" while in front of a TV, perhaps more than they do while reading, but does turning a page really burn more calories than pressing a button?
Basically, the studies suggest that being a blogger is practically a pre-existing condition. Although given the possibility that the Affordable Care Act might be overturned, I probably shouldn't give the insurance companies any ideas.
