Sitting Can Cause Serious Health Issues

Sitting Can Cause Serious Health Issues unsplash.com At least, to an extent. There is now a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that sitting for extended periods of time can cause heart disease and diabetes. The kicker? This link exists for those who exercise as well. So if you’re getting home from work, doing your quick workout and then parking it on the couch the rest of the night, you aren’t doing yourself any favors, even if experience tells you that you deserve the relaxation period. The big problem with this study, however, is the fact that it’s very hard to measure inactivity, so there isn’t any evidence regarding the amount of exercise required to “counteract” the effects of sitting. So what’s the solution? Exercise more, sit less. According to Deborah Rohm Young, team lead at Kaiser Permanente: “The evidence to date is suggestive, but not conclusive, that sedentary behavior contributes to cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk … Given the current state of the science on sedentary behavior and in the absence of sufficient data to recommend quantitative guidelines, it is appropriate to promote the advisory, ‘Sit less, move more.’ This means that the absolute minimum goal for exercise is 30 minutes of moderate activity. So that nightly walk around the block, or that 20 minute yoga class, aren’t going to cut it. And if you work in an office, or sit for extended periods of time at work, it’s recommended that you stand up and take a walk around once an hour at least. And still, it’s unclear whether or not this much activity would counteract the amount of sitting we do as a general population. According to Young: “Regardless of how much physical activity someone gets, prolonged sedentary time could negatively impact the health of your heart and blood vessels … There are many important factors we don’t understand about sedentary time yet. The types of studies available identify trends but don’t prove cause and effects.” So I suppose the next logical question would be: what is sedentary behavior? This is defined to include the following: sitting, reclining, lying down while awake, reading, watching television, working on the computer, light housework and leisurely walking. Basically, anything that doesn’t get up to the level of moderate/vigorous physical activity. According to Young: “Based on existing evidence, we found that U.S. adults are sedentary for about six to eight hours a day. Adults 60 years and older spend between 8.5 and 9.6 hours a day in sedentary time … Regardless of how much physical activity someone gets, prolonged sedentary time could negatively impact the health of your heart and blood vessels.” According to the researchers, about half of all jobs required activity back in the 1960s, but now, less than 20 percent of jobs require such activity. According to Young: “There are clearly physiological changes that occur when physically active individuals become inactive … Despite these potentially relevant findings on how physical inactivity can be associated with biological dysregulation, we do not have direct evidence that this leads to cardiovascular disease.” So what are the numbers? According to the study, (as reported by NBC News), “for every two hours spent sitting in front of the computer or television, the average person raises his or her risk of colon cancer by 8 percent, of endometrial cancer by 10 percent and of lung cancer by 6 percent.” According to Daniela Schmid and Dr. Michael Leitzmann in a report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, “The primary finding from our meta-analysis is that prolonged TV viewing and time spent in other sedentary pursuits is associated with increased risks of colon and endometrial cancer.” Accprding to Dr. Graham Colditz, an expert on cancer prevention, “Given that working adults can spend eight or more hours a day at work, the worksite is an ideal and key setting to reduce sedentary time through worksite policies or changes to the physical work environment.” What don’t we know? Why sitting and cancer correlate. Something is causing this increased risk, but researchers can’t pinpoint it … yet. According to Schmid and Leitzmann: “Prolonged sitting time lowers energy expenditure and displaces time spent in light physical activities, which consequently leads to weight gain over time. Moreover, TV viewing is accompanied by increased consumption of unhealthy foods, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, sweets, and fast food.” Of course, the problem could be obesity (a known cause of cancer), or the problem could be much more complex than that. No matter what, health experts are telling the general population to get up. Basically, no more sitting!