A lack of physical activity is projected to put nearly 1.4 billion people worldwide at risk for chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease. As if the health risks themselves weren’t enough to illustrate the costs of sitting idly, a team of scientists in England has put a hard number on both the astronomical health and financial costs of a sedentary lifestyle.

Prolonged sedentary behavior is defined as sitting — whether at a work desk or in front of the TV — for at least six hours per day. For most people who work a typical workday in an office, that’s probably on the low side, and even that amount of sitting around seems to extract high costs.

Leonie Heron, the Ph.D. candidate at Queens University Belfast who authored this work, shows in her