Sitting for more than three hours a day鈥攅ven if you exercise鈥攃an , a new study finds. In a paper published Monday in the online journal , researchers found that physical activity and sedentary behavior independently affect health and life expectancy. In other words, exercise does not cancel out sedentary behavior. 鈥淲hether you鈥檙e physically active and meet the exercise guidelines, or if you鈥檙e not active, sitting is bad,鈥 said Peter Katzmarzyk, the lead author of the paper. According to the study, inactivity has nearly the same effect on mortality as does smoking. Watching two hours of television daily cut life expectancy by an additional 1.4 years. The study noted that the average American is inactive for nearly 55 percent of the day.
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