Sitting the new smoking

Last Updated on January 6th, 2018

We’ve seen in the news recently how prolonged sitting is bad for our health. We’ve even seen how it’s been dubbed as “the new smoking”, which suggests that it’s so bad, it shortens our lives!

New research from the University of Utah suggests that simply standing does not offset the dangers of sitting, but walking for an additional two minutes for each hour of the day might! It doesn’t completely offset the dangers of prolonged sitting, but does apparently reduce the risk of early death by 33%, but this is providing we maintain our 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week.

This study examined over 3000 participants from the NHANES survey (a large survey in the US that looks at nutritional and health status of adults and children) who were using accelerometers to capture their activities and followed for three years. This is not an interventional study, so conclusions cannot be drawn regarding whether this additional 2 minutes of walking definitively leads to better health.

You can read the news release here.

 

Related blog: Lack of exercise kills more than obesity

In January, I posted on Facebook the results of a University of Cambridge study which suggested that a brisk 20 minute walk every day would be enough to reduce the risk of an early death. This research was done on a much larger population – over 300,000 European men and women – and showed that twice as many deaths could be attributable to physical inactivity compared to obesity. Physical inactivity is also associated with greater risk of diseases of the heart and some cancers. The researchers estimated that just a 20 minute brisk walk everyday, burning between 90 and 100kcal, could reduce the risk of early death by up to as much as 30%.

You can read more about that here