Total Daily Sitting Time affects Mortality Risk Too, Research Finds
Previous studies suggest that prolonged sitting severely affects our health and increases the risk of mortality. This is why people are advised to get up from their desk after an hour or so of sitting and do some strolling or stretching before going back to their chair. But according to a new study, it isn’t just the amount of time spent sitting, but also the way in which sitting time is accumulated during the day, that can affect risk of early death.
The new findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal, found that adults who sit for one to two hours at a time without moving have a higher mortality rate than adults who accrue the same amount of sedentary time in shorter bouts.
On average, 77 percent of the participants’ waking hours is spent on sedentary activities. This is equivalent to more than 12 hours per day. Over a median follow-up period of four years, 340 of the participants died. Mortality risk was calculated for those with various amounts of total sedentary time and various sedentary patterns. Those with the greatest amount of sedentary time—more than 13 hours per day—and who frequently had sedentary bouts of at least 60 to 90 consecutive minutes had a nearly two-fold increase in death risk compared with those who had the least total sedentary time and the shortest sedentary bouts.
The study also found that participants who kept most of their sitting bouts to less than 30 minutes had the lowest risk of death.
"We tend to think of sedentary behaviour as just the sheer volume of how much we sit around each day," said Keith Diaz, PhD, associate research scientist in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Centre (CUMC) and lead investigator of the study.
"But previous studies have suggested that sedentary patterns—whether an individual accrues sedentary time through several short stretches or fewer long stretches of time—may have an impact on health."
"This study adds to the growing literature on how dangerous long periods of sitting are for our health, and underscores a growing awareness among clinicians and researchers that sitting really is the new smoking," said Dr Monika Safford, co-author of the study. "We need creative ways to ensure that we not only cut back on the total amount we sit, but also increase regular interruptions to sitting with bursts of activity."
Source of this article:
Patterns of Sedentary Behaviour and Mortality in U.S. Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A National Cohort Study
@Copyright 2017 by www.NaturalTherapyForAll.com All Rights Reserved
Featured Practitioner: Samantha Hillyer Theraphies
Other Practitioners: Time Line Therapy Nottingham