Sit 3 Hours a Day, Die 2 Years Earlier

It's a wonder anyone dares sit anymore, considering the avalanche of recent studies that have been telling us that doing so ups our risk of cancer and heart disease, makes us fatter, and turns meetings into awful experiences. And here's a new one to add to the pile: Sitting for three hours a day can take two years off of your life, reports the Wall Street Journal—even if you exercise and eschew smoking, according to a new "meta-analysis" of five studies of 167,000 people.

Couch potatoes have it even worse: Watch more than two hours of television a day and subtract another 1.4 years. "Sedentary behavior is something we need to take note of beyond telling people to get 30 minutes of activity a day," says one of the study's authors. "Several studies show that when you're sitting, your leg muscles are completely inactive. When you're sitting and completely inactive, this is when you run into trouble managing blood glucose." You can find the full study at BMJ Open. (More sedentary behavior stories.)