Your Desk Job Makes You Fat, Sick and Dead

Your Desk Job Makes You Fat, Sick and Dead [INFOGRAPHIC] | Digg Lifestyle:


The productivity of the average worker has skyrocketed thanks to technology, but it comes at the price of a sedentary lifestyle. And mounting research suggests that sitting at your desk for eight hours a day can have a dramatic impact on your health.

Don’t get me wrong. I burn plenty of calories typing emails. And I make a point to always click and drag through long websites and documents — scroll wheels are for lazy people. But all that strenuous activity pales in comparison to the exercise my forebears did on the job 50 years ago (killing dinosaurs). In the 1960s, nearly half of all jobs required physical activity. Today, less than 20% do. Day to day, you may not see the toll of this. But over lifetimes and large amounts of health data, the effects are pretty staggering.