New health concern: Beware the risks of too much sitting

Wednesday, April 04, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: sitting, health risks, sedentary lifestyle

(NaturalNews) Sitting for too many hours during the day could significantly increase your risk of dying, according to a new study published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. Data collected from Australia's The 45 and Up Study found that people who sit the most during an average day are up to 50 percent more likely to die within three years compared to those who sit the least.

Many people in the industrialized world today work jobs that require them to sit at their desks for at least eight hours out of the day. And when they get home, the great many of these sedentary folks end up slouching down on the couch in front of the television set for a few more hours of sitting time. At the end of the day, some people sit for as long as 11 hours or more, which could significantly increase their risk of dying from all causes.

For their study, researchers evaluated the questionnaire responses of 22,497 individuals who were at least 45 years of age or older, and living in the Southern Hemisphere. After accounting for other health risk factors that included age, gender, physical activity levels, body mass index, disabilities, and smoking status, the researchers determined that the longer a person sits, the more likely he or she is to die.

Those who sit more than eight hours a day were found to be 15 percent more likely to die compared to those who sat less, and those who sat more than 11 hours per day were as much as 40 percent more likely to die. Even those who sat more than 11 hours per day but were also active and healthy were found to be at an elevated risk of dying from too much sitting.

"The evidence on the detrimental health effects of prolonged sitting has been building over the last few years," said Hidde van der Ploeg, author of the study and senior research fellow at the University of Sydney. "The study stands out because of its large number of participants and the fact that it was one of the first that was able to look at total sitting time. Most of the evidence to date had been on the health risks of prolonged television viewing."

A report unveiled by the American Institute for Cancer Research late last year also claimed that too much sitting is responsible for spurring 43,000 new cases of colon cancer and 49,000 cases of breast cancer every year.

Sources for this article include:

http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=663123

http://www.45andup.org.au/

http://www.cbsnews.com