They are saying that sitting is the new smoking. We know that sitting causes its own challenges for your health, not just because you aren’t doing other more active things while you are sitting but because sitting actually causes problems of its own. Given that a lot of work these days forces us to be sitting the question becomes how can you counteract the effects of sitting? Standing desks are one answer to that question but exercise is another and the question then becomes how much exercise do you need to do to counteract a day of sitting at your desk?
For the new analysis researchers examined 16 studies that included data from more than one million men and women. The subjects of the studies were divided into four groups depending on their level of moderate physical activity ranging from five minutes per day in the bottom group to over 60 minutes in the top group. Moderate intensity exercise was defined as walking at a speed of 5km/h or cycling at 10km/h.
The compiled results showed that 60 to 75 minutes per day of moderate intensity exercise is enough to eliminate the risk of early death arising from sitting for over eight hours per day. However, the results showed that those people who were physically inactive were between 28 and 59 per cent more likely to die early than those who exercised the most. That means that lack of physical activity is actually a greater health risk than the sitting itself.
So while sitting is bad for you, so is not exercising. The answer according to the researchers, if you work in an office, is to walk at lunchtime and walk, run or cycle before or after work. You don’t have to become a gym junkie but you do have to move it before you become unable to.
Source: The Lancet
