A 3-year-long study that followed over
200,000 Australian adults concluded that the longer you sit every day, the
higher your risk of premature death.
So people who sat the most and who did no
exercise were 3 times more likely to die over these 3 years than their more
active, less sedentary peers.
But here’s the rub: the data also revealed
that anyone sitting between 8-11 hours a day had a 15 % higher risk of dying
than people who sat less than 8 hours a day, and this held true even if the
longer sitters were doing regular exercise outside their sedentary time.
Even worse, people who sat more than 11
hours a day had a 40 % higher risk of overall death.
Seems to me that a study like this has
several major cautions especially the fact that people who sit longer hours are
very likely more sick to begin with than people who don’t sit as much and it’s
their poorer health that is actually the reason for their higher risk of
premature death, and I know that the researchers try to account for a factor
like this but in short-term studies like this, it seems to me impossible to
account for this potential mitigating determinant.
That said, sitting too much can’t possibly
be good for anyone so if you have a sedentary job, you should probably try
especially hard to maximize the time you spend doing more active stuff away
from work.
Like me, for example, who spends most of
his day on the computer but most of his time away from the computer up and
about as a (rather poor) house-husband.
But hey, it sure beats having a real job,
and besides, I love the limited company, which consists entirely of a
flatulent, somnolent rottweiler.
He’s a great listener, though. I think.
