Science Says You Should Fidget Regularly if You Don’t Want to Drop Dead

First of all, fidgeting is a fantastic word.

More importantly, however, it could be an antidote to the abrupt end of your natural life expectancy. A new study from the U.K. has determined that fidgeting regularly can undo some of the harmful effects of sitting down for too long, which, from my understanding, pretty much causes the same amount of damage as smoking three packs a day with a shot of ether between drags.

To examine the health benefits of restless moving about, University of Leeds professor Janet Cade divided 12,778 women aged 37 to 78 into three groups – low, middle and high fidgeters – and studied their health outcomes over a 12-year period. She found that women who sat for seven or more hours a day were 30% more likely to have died from any cause than those who sat for five or less hours, but only if they were low fidgeters. Those in the middle and high fidgeting groups had no greater risk of dying when they sat for the longer periods.

Though the link between fidgeting and improved health is undetermined, there’s no reason you shouldn’t toss a few irritable body movements between long bouts of mortality-accelerating inactivity.

So go ahead, bang those pencils on a notepad like you’re Neil Peart on two dozen drums; play garbage bin basketball like you’re Jordan in ’98; hell, shoot staples at your coworker if it means it’ll save your life.

Because if there’s one great thing you can do for your body today, it’s fidget.

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