Here’s the Five-Minute Fix for Too Much Sitting

I Like To Move It Move It: If your job (or your doom-scrolling) keeps you in a chair for hours on end, this one’s relevant to you. Yes, it’s become patently clear that sitting too much isn’t great, but new research from Columbia University Irving Medical Center gets super specific about how much, exactly, is too much. The study concluded that sitting for more than 30 minutes straight is linked to a higher risk of dying from cancer, based on data from over 91,000 people tracked for about 12 years. 

How To Do It: Five minutes of walking every 30 minutes of sitting made the biggest difference in offsetting the downsides of being sedentary. That could look like a walk around the block or a few laps up and down the hallway. Shorter breaks helped some too, just not as much.

The Benefits: In the Columbia study, the habit lowered blood pressure and blood sugar, cutting post-meal spikes by 58 percent compared to sitting all day. The results of a larger UK Biobank study supported this, finding that replacing sitting time with light activity, such as walking or housework, was associated with a lower risk of cancer death.