Sitting is the New Smoking...Right?

The expression "Sitting is the New Smoking" is firmly entrenched in the cultural lexicon. But that begs a very important question: is it true?

The answer is an emphatic "NO."

Tobacco is an addictive and lethal carcinogen. According to the National Institute of Health, smoking is the direct cause of lung cancer in 90 percent of men and almost 80 percent of women. It can also cause emphysema, oral cancer, stroke, and coronary heart disease. And this is merely a partial list. Equally (if not more) importantly, second hand smoke is also lethal.

About 2,5000,000 non-smokers have died from health problems related to secondhand smoke, according to the Center for Disease Control. The tobacco lobby has known for years that using their product can have lethal repercussions but used public relation firms and a compliant medical industry to suppress that knowledge. (1)

There is no correlation to the purveyors of office furniture. Put bluntly, IKEA and Home Depot are not colluding to make your butt fat. There are no proven links between cardiorespiratory diseases and extended sitting. And, unless your co-worker is foisting homemade lemon meringue pie on you, your co-worker's girth will not negatively impact your health.

Sitting is definitely not the new smoking. But excessive sitting is still very, very bad.

In his excellent book "Exercised" Harvard professor and evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman cited a few studies that highlight the hazards of perpetual sitting.

In one study cited by Lieberman, sitting more than three hours a day is responsible for nearly four percent of deaths worldwide, and every hour of sitting is as harmful as the benefits accrued from twenty minutes of exercise. (2)

In a much more conclusive study cited in the same book, Danish researchers paid a group of healthy and active young men to become "couch-potatoes." The men were limited to fifteen hundred steps a day for two weeks. The results were profound: the men added seven percent more visceral fat (the type of fat associated with the risk of serious medical issues such as heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes) over the duration of the study. (3)

Another study had a similar focus on active people. The study surveyed 240,000 Americans, and found that moderate to vigorous exercise "lowered but didn't erase the risk of dying associated with being sedentary." (4)

So, there's no doubt that extended sitting is detrimental to your health. I think it's the biggest impediment to fitness simply because it's so ubiquitous.

On a personal note, I have my own unintentional experiment with sitting. Prior to the COVID pandemic, I was in constant motion. I was pushing, pulling, throwing medicine balls, and competing against my clients in various exercises. When the pandemic first hit, I had no experience with remote training. I'm kind of a Luddite. So, I did what came naturally to me (and everyone else).

I sat on a couch when I was training people.

In short order, my hamstrings became much tighter and my lower back started hurting. I was fatigued more often. But, similar to many people who work in an office environment, I just opted for the most convenient arrangement. For someone who was always preaching about the evils of sitting, there was certainly a faint whiff of hypocrisy.

The day I stopped sitting while training is the day when my friend and long-time client Cooney (AKA the Mayor) stuck his mug close to the computer screen and said "Hey Josh .... is that a bag of chips next to you on the couch?" That was my wake-up call. In the five years since the Mayor called me out, I've rarely sat while training people.

We've banished the unfortunate people addicted to nicotine to remote alleyways. Smoking is heavily stigmatized and "smoker's lungs" is an expression that needs no explanation.

"Sitter's hamstrings" should be acknowledged as a much more widespread (if less lethal) problem. The bottom line (excuse the pun): if you want to improve your health and fitness in 2026, the first thing you should do is try to sit less.

Sources:

(1) Nina Bai (07/09/24) "How the Tobacco Industry Began Funding Courses for Doctors." Stanford Medicine News Center

(2) Daniel Lieberman "Exercised" Penguin Books 2020

(3) Ibid.

(4) Ibid.

Joshua Brandt is an Oakland based personal trainer. He can be reached at joshua@joshuabrandtpt.com or (415) 412-7339. 

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