Is Sitting a Disease? A Wake-Up Call

Recently I was listening to a podcast with Dr. Andrew Huberman, in which he spoke with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. At one point she posed a provocative question: Is sitting a disease? That stuck with me. Because on one hand, we all know that a lack of movement and poor diet fuel chronic disease. But we often gloss over a sneaky, silent companion - our modern addiction to sitting.

The Quiet Epidemic of Sedentary Life

If you stop and count your hours, you’ll see how sitting has crept into nearly every corner of daily life. Work is mostly done from desks. Socialising is often lounging on couches (or worse, screens). Even relaxing is reduced to streaming, or doom-scrolling in a chair. In many cities, it’s easier than ever to order an Uber or to take the train rather than walk. Thirty years ago, children were out riding bikes, playing in the yard, or running between classes. Now they’re handed iPads or smartphones and told, implicitly, that this is normal.

Just a few decades ago, a large proportion of jobs required physical labor - farming, manufacturing, trade work, but now many roles are fully remote or desk-based.

We evolved to hunt, to roam, to carry, to climb. Now we wait until our stomach rumbles to get up and shuffle to the fridge.

This shift hasn’t just happened overnight, rather, over the last 5 to 10 years, device addiction, streaming services, convenience apps, and remote work have all amplified our inactivity.

The result: sitting is normal, movement is optional.

The Science: What Happens When We Sit Too Much

Sedentary behaviour, defined as waking time spent sitting or lying with low energy expenditure (≤1.5 METs), is distinct from simply “not exercising” (Owen et al., 2010). A person can meet exercise guidelines but still be sedentary most of the day and that’s where trouble begins.

Health associations

Large-scale epidemiological and meta-analysis studies have linked high amounts of sitting to increased risk of:

• All-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease
• Type 2 diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome
• Some cancers (e.g. colon, breast)

Expanding on some examples,

Metabolism and Insulin Sensitivity

When muscles remain inactive, enzymes like lipoprotein lipase, essential for fat metabolism, drop sharply, reducing the body’s ability to break down fats and regulate glucose (Hamilton et al., 2007). This can lead to insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes (Thyfault & Bergouignan, 2020).

Circulation and Cardiovascular Health

Prolonged sitting reduces leg blood flow and impairs endothelial function, the lining of blood vessels responsible for regulating vascular tone (Thosar et al., 2015). Over time, this increases the risk of atherosclerosis and heart disease.

Inflammation and Hormones

Sedentary time is associated with chronic low-grade inflammation, dysregulated cortisol rhythms, and altered adipokines, hormones secreted by fat tissue (Benatti & Pedersen, 2015). These imbalances contribute to obesity, metabolic syndrome, and hormonal dysfunction.

Brain Function

Research suggests that extended sitting may also affect cognitive health. Excess sedentary time correlates with reduced executive function, memory, and higher dementia risk (Falck et al., 2017).

In short, when we sit for too long, metabolism slows, blood sugar control weakens, circulation suffers, and inflammation builds up. The body wasn’t built for this kind of stillness.

Small Movements, Big Impact

Here’s the encouraging part, it doesn’t take marathons to reverse the damage. Studies show that even short bursts of light movement, like standing or walking for 2-3 minutes every half hour, can improve insulin sensitivity by up to 30% (Dunstan et al., 2012).

Just a 15-minute walk after meals has been shown to reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes by around 22% (DiPietro et al., 2013). Even a gentle 10-minute walk up your street can boost circulation, improve mood, and help regulate glucose levels for several hours.

That’s why movement is medicine

Sitting isn’t just a habit, it’s a modifiable risk factor, like smoking or a poor diet (Katzmarzyk & Lee, 2012).

The good news? The antidote is simple: move more, more often. Even brief movement breaks can reboot your metabolic system as mentioned.

In other words, your body doesn’t need perfection, it needs movement. The smallest shift from sitting to movement creates ripple effects that extend across your metabolism, brain, and hormones.

Introducing oNex: Not a Fitness App but a Movement Platform

This is precisely the kind of paradigm shift that oNex exists to lead and advocate for. Rather than simply creating another copy-cat fitness app, oNex will be a place where you want to move, an environment, culture, and platform that lowers the barrier to movement in everyday life.

• We design spaces and systems that subtly encourage you to walk, stand, and exercise (even micro-moves).
• We build cues, social norms, and community to break the sitting cycle.
• We aim to make the “default” between screen time or downtime a move time, not another hour trapped in a chair.

Because movement doesn’t need to be epic. It just needs to happen. Shake off the idea that sitting is neutral, it’s not. We were built for motion, and when we reintroduce motion, we turn on our metabolic engine, awaken our brain, and reclaim health.

Let’s reimagine a world where sitting looks like a temporary pause, not the norm. Because when we move, life happens.