Sitting down can be a killer.

Sitting down can be a killer

If you think your job is killing you, you could be right.

A study has found that people who sit down for more than 10 hours a day and don’t exercise have almost doubled the risk of dying sooner than those with active lifestyles.

The researchers say that while exercise does help, it doesn’t totally counteract the damage done by long periods of sitting.

If you’ve spent the week at work sitting at your desk and you’re still lying in bed this morning, this story might motivate you to get up.

Researchers have looked at the lifestyles of more than 260,000 men and women in New South Wales.

Basically those who sat down for more than 10 hours a day had almost double the chance of dying than those who only sat down for four hours a day.

One of the study’s authors is Professor Adrian Bauman, from Sydney University’s School of Public Health.

The highest risk people are people who don’t exercise, don’t do their 30 minutes a day and who are in high sitting lifestyles; they sit a lot at work and at home. That’s the highest risk.

And the best off are the people who meet their exercise recommendations and are low sitters; they don’t sit very much throughout the day, only a few hours a day.

Now you found that people who sit down a lot during the day for work and also in their leisure time, they have almost double the chance of dying earlier than people who are quite active; do you know what these people are dying of?

Another one of the Study’s authors is Professor Emily Banks from the Australian National University.

While exercise may sound like a logical solution to the problem, she says sitting down for long periods can’t be totally reversed by exercising.

A lot of our public health policies say well get out there and get half an hour of exercise a day but they don’t talk about the amount of time that you spend in very inert activities.

So, what we actually found was that not only was this increased risk of death with sitting, it was regardless of how much other physical activity you did in terms of your sort of intensive vigorous activity.

So, I think the message that we saw was that even if you’re getting that half an hour a day, if you’re a couch potato the rest of the time, you’re potentially affecting your health.

A comforting thought for those who’ve just been given a new definition of a dead end job.

Reference

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3330211.htm