Whether it’s the hours that you spend sitting at a desk for your job, a long commute that takes you to and from the office, or spending an entire weekend binge-watching your favorite TV show, more and more people are spending hours without moving.

While we’ve long known about the potential health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle, new studies indicate that there is a direct correlation between excessive sitting and heart disease.

To make things even more concerning, these new studies show that being active outside of your working hours may not be enough to counteract heart disease brought about by sitting too much (1). Understanding the dangers of excessive sitting and taking steps to counteract those problems is an important step in improving your cardiac health.

Learn more about these studies and how you can mitigate cardiovascular problems today.

The Connection Between Sitting and Heart Disease

According to a recent study that focused on data collected from roughly 90,000 participants, individuals who sit for more than 10.6 hours per day are significantly more likely to deal with heart disease and cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure, stroke, and heart failure (2).

While being active is generally considered a great way of counteracting heart disease, the study indicates that people who sit more than 10.6 hours per day are more likely to deal with heart disease, even if they’re physically active during other parts of the day.

According to scientists and cardiologists, the link between sitting and heart disease is based on how inactivity impacts the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar and fat. When you spend extended periods of time sitting, your body’s metabolic processes slow down. This leads to an increase in blood glucose levels and bad cholesterol, both of which are directly linked to heart disease.

There is also a link between extended periods of sitting and an increase in blood pressure. When you spend hours sitting down, your circulation slows down. Reduced circulation is a perfect recipe for high blood pressure, which leads to cardiovascular disease. This connection is why even those who are active when not sitting aren’t completely immune from the risk of heart disease.

Why Excessive Sitting is Bad For Your Heart

Sitting for extended periods can cause a number of physiological changes that can affect the heart and vascular system. A decrease in muscle activity, especially in the large muscles in the legs, and there’s a decrease in the amount of blood that flows to and from your heart.

This leads to a reduction in circulation which causes blood to pool in your extremities. While it takes some time to develop, this pooling of blood often leads to blood clots which can be fatal if they move to the heart or lungs.

When you move, your body breaks down sugars and fats in the bloodstream. Conversely, when you spend a lot of time sitting, your body doesn’t perform these actions, allowing those same fats and sugars to build up. Lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme that metabolizes fat, becomes less active when you’re sedentary. This decrease in lipoprotein lipase leads to elevated levels of triglycerides and LDL (or “bad”) cholesterol.

Both LDL cholesterol and triglycerides increase the amount of plaque that can build up on the inside of your arteries, increasing the likelihood of a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems.

Other studies indicate that extended periods of sitting can increase the amount of inflammation in your body. Chronic low-grade inflammation has been directly linked to a variety of cardiovascular problems.

When you combine this increase in inflammation with a slowed metabolic process and the formation of plaque in the arteries, sitting too much is a recipe for various cardiovascular diseases and other problems.

How Much Sitting is Too Much Sitting?

Obviously, you want to protect yourself from any causes of heart disease. With that in mind, it’s important to understand how much sitting is too much sitting. While you can’t completely eliminate sitting from your daily routine, you don’t want to let it cross into dangerous levels. Based on this most recent study, sitting for more than 10 hours per day is too much sitting.

On the surface, that seems like a relatively easy number to stay under. However, when put into practice, it’s not quite as simple as you may think. Let’s assume that you spend eight hours each day sitting for work. That number accounts for a daily lunch break, during which you probably spend some time sitting and relaxing.

Assuming that you drive 30 minutes to and from work, that puts you at nine hours of sitting each day. Let’s assume that you get eight hours of sleep each night, which isn’t always possible, but it remains the standard.

That’s 17 hours of being sedentary before you account for the time that you spend relaxing after work, binge-watching your favorite TV shows or movies, and getting no activity. Assuming that you spend only two hours of time relaxing on the sofa, that’s 19 hours of each day spent being largely sedentary.

This number is significantly higher than the 10.6 hours discussed in the study, which means it’s even more likely that you’re among the number of people who spend 10 or more hours a day not moving.

How to Counteract the Problems Caused by Sitting

The importance of being active cannot be overstated, especially when it comes to improving cardiac health. However, studies indicate that regular exercise is not enough to completely offset the dangers caused by sitting too much. Scientists have started calling this the “active couch potato effect,” which highlights the limitations of exercise in counteracting the side effects of sitting too much.

Hypothetically, let’s assume that you spend 14 hours a day sitting and sleeping. In the name of trying to make yourself healthier, you go to the gym for one hour a day, five days a week. While that’s certainly better than not getting any physical activity, those five hours spent in the gym are not enough to counteract the problems caused by excessive sitting.

With this in mind, it’s important to integrate some movement into your day, as many times a day as you can. Set a timer to remind yourself to get up and walk throughout the day. Even if your job makes it impossible to do that once an hour, you can usually still find some opportunities to get away from your desk every so often throughout the day.

Something as simple as walking down the hallway and back a couple of times can be enough to prevent blood clots. While that small amount of activity may not be enough to lower your blood glucose levels significantly, it’s important to remember that any activity is better than no activity.

Standing desks have also become hugely popular for those who spend a lot of time at work behind a desk. While it may be easier to invest in a standing desk if you work from home, you can certainly talk to your employer about bringing one in if you work in an office. Doing your job from a standing position not only helps promote activity, but it can also improve posture which has been shown to improve cardiac health.

When you’re not at work, try to incorporate activity into your routine in other ways. If you like to spend a lot of time binge-watching TV shows and movies, consider watching some of them on your phone or tablet. This should allow you to enjoy your leisure activities while walking on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike.

While you don’t have to spend hours every day doing this, you can incorporate one to two hours of daily activities without forfeiting what you do to relax. By being strategic with your screen time, which includes everything from watching TV to scrolling through social media, you can find opportunities to get active.

Increased Movement = Improved Health

The newfound risks of extended periods of sitting highlight the importance of adopting a more active lifestyle. While there’s nothing you can do to eliminate sitting from your day, you don’t have to spend 10 or more hours sitting without getting some daily activity into your routine.

By making some conscious changes to your routine, you can improve your heart health, cut down on the risk of blood clots, and keep your metabolism performing like you need it to.

Sources:

1. Walther, Olivia. (2024, November 15). Sitting Too Long Can Harm Heart Health, Even for Active People. American College of Cardiology. https://www.acc.org/About-ACC/Press-Releases/2024/11/15/16/33/Sitting-Too-Long-Can-Harm-Heart-Health-Even-for-Active-People

2. Ajufo, Ezimamaka MD, Churchill, Timothy W. MD, et al. Accelerometer-Measured Sedentary Behavior and Risk of Future Cardiovascular Disease. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2025; 85(5)473-486. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2024.10.065