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December 19, 2014

Strange But True!

Q. We live amid a sea of them: adjustable, swivel, recliner, wing, club, lounge, arm, dining, bar, four-legged, three-legged, those in cars, planes, trains. They're chairs, of course, but why are they said to be such bad news?

A. As Mayo Clinic endocrinologist James Levine puts it in Scientific American magazine, they're also “killer chairs.” “We sit in them, work in them, shop in them, eat in them and date in them. We Americans sit for most of our waking hours, 13 hours every day on average.” Yet some 18 studies in recent years covering 800,000 people have confirmed the deadly nature of chairs: Those of us who sit for four or more hours per day watching TV have shown a death rate from all causes 46 percent higher than for those viewing less than two hours per day.


 
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