Please sit down to read this

This family is doomed.

Restricting the amount of time spent seated every day to less than 3 hours might boost the life expectancy of U.S. adults by an extra 2 years, according to an analysis of published research in the British Medical Journal. And cutting down TV viewing to less than 2 hours every day might extend life by almost 1.4 years.

Several previous studies have linked extended periods spent sitting down and/or watching TV to poor health, such as diabetes and death from heart disease/stroke. 

The researchers used data collected for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for 2005/6 and 2009/10, to calculate the amount of time US adults spent watching TV and sitting down on a daily basis.

To be precise:

The results of life table analyses indicates that cutting the amount of time spent sitting down every day to under three hours would add an extra two years to life expectancy. Similarly, restricting time spent watching TV to under two hours daily would extend life expectancy by an extra 1.38 years.

"Given that the results from objective monitoring of sedentary time in NHANES has indicated that adults spend an average of 55% of their day engaged in sedentary pursuits, a significant shift in behaviour change at the population level is required to make demonstrable improvements in life expectancy," they conclude.

This distresses me so much that I think I'll turn on a rerun of NCIS and take a nap.

(Thanks, Jim)