“Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death.” So says Dr James Levine, director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative and inventor of the treadmill desk.

I work out for an hour a day, partly because it keeps me sane in a world ruled by deadlines, and I invested in a sit-stand desk, so I should be okay, right? Not according to some research, which claims even regular exercise isn’t enough to counteract the many many hours we spend sitting, and that standing desks create a similar problem. The latest dire headlines claim sitting is the new smoking – some even assert that it’s worse for your health than smoking – and that just six hours a day of sitting is incredibly dangerous for your health. Kinda terrifying for someone who works from home and sits at a desk or computer writing for countless hours a day-and-night – sixteen hours a day isn’t unusual for most people these days, when you include sitting to eat, to drive to work, to work, to watch TV etc. But is this true?

The Active Times claims (with links to the studies) that highly sedentary people have a greater risk of developing cancer, diabetes, despression and heart disease, that even exercise and low calorie diets can be sabotaged by too much sitting, and extended sitting turns off the enzyme that burns fat as fuel.

The Time article Sitting Is Killing You outlines the health issues caused by prolonged sitting, backs it up with interviews and studies, and also offers simple ways to create a makeshift standing work space, and to increase your NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) activity throughout the day, from things like getting up to make a cup of tea to taking the stairs, and even fidgeting. It also outlines US research that found students who stood up to listen and work increased test scores by 20 per cent…

The Huffington Post article Sitting Is the New Smoking: Ways A Sedentary Lifestyle Is Killing You, claims that “another reason the smoking analogy is relevant is that studies have repeatedly shown the effects of long-term sitting are not reversible through exercise or other good habits. Sitting, like smoking, is very clearly bad for our health, and the only way to minimize the risk is to limit the time we spend on our butts each day…”

Alarmingly, this article, Sitting Is Killing You, But Standing Isn’t the Answer (Neither is Exercise), claims even regular exercise and a standing desk don’t offset the harm of sitting, because sedentary is the new smoking. Scary, butat least it includes some great tips and info to make tiny changes that will help. (And it justifies my love for my fitbit – the alarm that lets me know when I’ve been sitting for 50 minutes is a great reminder to get up and walk around the apartment or do a few star jumps – just 250 steps in an hour will make it happy, and break up my sedentary-ness…)

However this recent article, and this one, claims that standing rather than sitting for six hours a day can help you lose 2.5kg a year, which will also increase general health, citing a new study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

Just don’t go completely overboard and stand for hours on end, because this article claims swapping all that sitting for standing causes joint pain and other issues. (Feeling like you can’t win? Me too! However this study was based on observing just twenty people, so I feel it’s less statistically significant, despite having been done by my old university…)

The article that made me feel the best was this SBS one, Why Sitting Is Not the New Smoking. Apparently when researchers went deeper with some of the studies mentioned above, they realised that regular exercise does help offset the effects of sitting for most of your day, a standing desk can be useful, and getting up for a few minutes every hour also has benefits.

So I guess the moral of the story is to include regular exercise (necessary for this and so many other reasons), break up your sitting every hour, even if it’s just a minute of jogging on the spot or stretching, and consider elevating your computer/workstation some of the time (but not all day), to further interrupt the risk of being too sedentary. Which means I’d better clear some of the clutter off mine so I can switch it to standing…