The Perils of Sitting, Part III

In this latest installment, I will summarize a couple of studies that address sitting time and associated health risks.  You can catch up on Parts I & II if you missed those the first time around here and here.

At this point there is a growing body of literature studying different outcomes, disease progressions and chronic conditions as they relate to sitting and they all have the same conclusions.  Prolonged sitting essentially has a dose response outcome: the more sitting you do, the more likely you are to suffer from chronic health issues and a shortened life span.  In many studies, these results are independent of other factors like diet and activity level which is even more concerning.  Even if you get your 5 mile run in everyday but you sit for 8 hours, it turns out there is still an increased risk for chronic health issues.  That being said, things like diet, exercise and sleep have profoundly positive effects in other ways so be sure to keep those good habits in your life.

Wilmot et al performed an analysis and summary of 18 moderate to high quality studies in 2012 all related to sedentary lifestyle and risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. (1)  In order to avoid discrepancies in analysis because of differing methods in each study, they compared highest sedentary times to lowest.  It is possible that this could skew their results by using the extremes but even taking that into consideration their results are striking:
112% increased risk of type II diabetes
147% increased risk of cardiovascular disease
90% increased risk of death by cardiovascular disease
49% increased risk of all-cause mortality

In 2010, Alpa et al looked at leisure time spent sitting and all-cause mortality rate. (2)  They compared sitting more than 6 hours vs. sitting less than 3 hours during leisure time and did not include occupational sitting time over the course of 14 years for over 120,000 people participating in the study.  Independent of physical activity women who sat for more than 6 hours had a 40% higher death rate than those who sat for less than 3 hours and men had an almost 20% higher death rate.  When combining sitting time with low physical activity, those numbers jump to 94% and 48% respectively!  Now you can imagine what happens if you add sitting time at work to these leisure numbers.  Conversely, those that sat less than 3 hours for leisure and were physically active had lower death rates.

I could continue to highlight other studies like the amount of time watching television and cardiovascular disease or the risk of obesity and prolonged sitting but I think it is quite clear already what the overall conclusion is.  Whether someone has to sit for work or chooses to sit for many hours during his/her leisure time (or both), that alone is a risk factor for his/her health and well being.

By pure coincidence, I came across an infographic basically addressing the same issues.  It is a bit sensationalized but even so it sheds some light on this important issue.  You can check it out here.

Wishing you many more healthy years before Mr. Reaper knocks on your door!  Then again, you may have some knocking on your door with much more reasonable requests of tricks or treats in the near future!

References:

1. E. G. Wilmot, C. L. Edwardson, F. A. Achana, M. J. Davies, T. Gorely, L. J. Gray, K. Khunti, T. Yates, S. J. H. Biddle. Sedentary time in adults and the association with diabetes, cardiovascular disease and death: systematic review and meta-analysis. Diabetologia. November 2012, Volume 55, Issue 11, pp 2895-2905.

2. Alpa V. Patel, Leslie Bernstein, Anusila Deka, Heather Spencer Feigelson, Peter T. Campbell, Susan M. Gapstur, Graham A. Colditz, Michael J. Thun. Leisure Time Spent Sitting in Relation to Total Mortality in a Prospective Cohort of US Adults. American Journal of Epidemiology. Volume 172, Issue 4, pp. 419-429.

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