“Sitting 7 to 8 hours a day increases the risk of dying by 59%.” Michelle Simes warns about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle.

We can never say it enough, a sedentary lifestyle, meaning the number of hours you sit per day, is a major risk factor for mortality. And Dr Michel Simes, Health Ambassador for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, is determined to remind us of this. 1:^eh May, the popular general practitioner, took to her Instagram account to re-share an excerpt from her appearance on the Quotidien show last October. In the video, he warns about the dangers of sitting for long periods of time, a posture that many French people adopt every day.

Sedentary lifestyle

“Sitting for 7 to 8 hours a day increases our risk of dying by 59% compared to those who spend less than 4 hours a day,” warns Dr. Simmes. The calculation is done quickly: three hours spent in front of the computer in the morning, another three hours in the afternoon, and the time spent on the couch in the evening before going to bed… Many people suffer. “We live in a sedentary society,” laments the doctor, “it’s a disaster.”

To break this immobility, he advises to wake up or stand in meetings at least once an hour. “The key is to contract your leg muscles,” Martin Duclos, sports physician and president of the National Observatory of Physical Activity and Sedentary Life (ONAPS), explained to us in a previous article. Lower extremity physical inactivity alters the very mechanism of bodily and cognitive cells. If the legs are still, the blood flow is low and does not stimulate the arterial walls, “it prevents the production of anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory hormones,” said the doctor. Furthermore, the muscles can no longer do their job of “sensing” cholesterol and glucose, so the latter will be stored around vital organs such as the pancreas or the heart, thus promoting cardiovascular disease. There is only one solution to avoid this: move.