USAToday recently published an article entitled “The longer you sit, the shorter your life”, based on a research study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The study followed a group of 123,216 volunteers over a period of 14 years to measure the effect of large spans of time of sitting coupled with little exercise upon one’s health. Unsurprisingly, it found that the more you sat and the less you exercised the higher the occurrence of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
In the study, people were more likely to die of heart disease than cancer. After adjusting for a number of risk factors, including body mass index (BMI) and smoking, women who spent six hours a day sitting had a 37% increased risk of dying versus those who spent less than three hours a day on their bottoms. For men the increased risk was 17%.
Exercise, even a little per day, did tend to lower the mortality risk tied to sitting, the team noted. However, sitting’s influence on death risk remained significant even when activity was factored in.
On the other hand, people who sat a lot and did not exercise or stay active had an even higher mortality risk: 94% for women and 48% for men.
To view the entire article head over to USAToday.com.