Too Much Sitting Is Hazardous to Your Health

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Created on Saturday, 21 January 2012 15:19

Written by Maria Tadd

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Anyone with a desk job is guilty of sitting for extended periods of time — it simply comes with the territory. I’ve had desk jobs all my life. While working as a copywriter for a healthcare advertising agency, I sat nearly motionless for hours on end. My ever expanding butt was practically glued to my chair. Aside from getting up to get something to eat, attend meetings and tend to the calls of nature, I sat slightly slumped forward as I typed away, performing my duties. If I only knew then, what I know now, I probably would be a lot healthier today. So LISTEN UP before it is too late!

The fact that prolonged sitting is bad for your back, posture, the circulation in your legs, etc. is not new news — the new reality — the deleterious effects are far graver.

A recent study published in Australia followed 8,800 healthy adults aged 25 and older for six and a half years and found that “each daily hour of television viewing was associated with an 18 percent increase in deaths from heart disease and an 11 percent increase in overall mortality. Those who watched television four hours or more a day were 80 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than those who watched two hours or less, and 46 percent more likely to die of any cause. And it did not matter whether they were overweight.”

The problem is not actually sitting itself but the lack of activity for long periods of time. Even if someone has a healthy body weight, sitting for long periods still has an unhealthy influence on blood sugar and blood fats. Being inactive increases one’s risk for cardiovascular disease (including strokes) diabetes, weight gain and other health problems associated with a sedentary lifestyle.

And there is more. If you thought the news about prolonged sitting couldn’t get any worse, just a few days ago another study was published which established a link between sitting too much with an increased risk for breast cancer and colon cancer.

According to James Levine, a professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., many people sit an average of seven to nine and a half hours a day. "If you've sat for an hour, you've probably sat too long," he says.

So what can we do? Experts have known for years that physical activity even just brisk walking for a mere 30 minutes a day decreases the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. In an effort to understand why exercise reduces cancer risk, a study of 320 post-menopausal women found that physical activity appears to decrease the risk of cancer by increasing insulin sensitivity and reducing body fat, inflammation, metabolic hormones and sex steroids hormones. The fact that exercise is good for us is a no brainer. Finding a way to incorporate it into our daily lives is the challenge.

Furthermore, it is important to understand that physical activity by itself is not enough to mitigate the hazards of prolonged sitting. Even if you do a half hour or even an hour of aerobic activity daily, you still need to take breaks from sitting. You need to get up and walk around, run up and down the stairs, do jumping jacks, whatever, to get your circulation going. The amount of time that you need to exercise during these breaks has not yet been determined. However, clearly some exercise will be better than none.

After having read these studies, I now keep a timer on my desk which is set to go off every 60 minutes. Now if I only could remember to push the start button.

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