Smoking, diabetes and heart disease are bad for you; but this is worse. Being sedentary is bad for our health. Over the years, studies have shown that those of us who sit for a long time at work are more likely to die younger. This idea has increased the sales of the sit-stand desk which is designed to allow you to sit or stand with good work station ergonomics. A recent study done at the Cleveland Clinic shows that the sedentary lifestyle can be life threatening and statistically, can be worse for us than smoking, diabetes and heart disease. The concerns they raised affects Americans who body mass index has risen from 25.1 in the 1960's to an average American male being 28.6. This study raises the alarm that Americans need to be in better shape. You can read more about this study below Smoking is bad, but sitting around doing nothing is even more deadly, study shows Published: Oct 28, 2018 8:23 p.m. Smoking is bad for your health. You don’t need an oxygen tank by your bedside to tell you that. Diabetes and heart disease, obviously not great, either. But what isn’t so obvious is that a sedentary lifestyle is actually worse than all three, according to a new study led by the Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Wael Jaber. “Being unfit on a treadmill or in an exercise stress test has a worse prognosis, as far as death, than being hypertensive, being diabetic or being a current smoker,” he said. “We’ve never seen something as pronounced as this and as objective as this.” The results are particularly troubling in the U.S., where we’re certainly grappling with a fitness problem. The average body mass index for an American male is 28.6, up from 25.1 in the 1960s. Anything over 24.9 is considered overweight and over 30 is deemed to be entering obese territory. Jaber explained that being unfit, at this point, should be treated like a disease that, fortunately, has a prescription: Exercise! He told CNN that researchers now face the task of conveying the risk — getting no exercise can have a severe impact on longevity — to the general population. Read more