Quit your office chair every 30 minutes because sitting for too long may increase death risk

Washington, September 13: Innumerable IT and corporate offices have a 9-hour shift where people normally sit and work non-stop majorly the entire day. Many researches have suggested that sitting at one place for a long duration is unhealthy but a new study published in Internal Medicine Annals has found that adults who sit for one to two hours at a time without moving have a higher mortality rate than adults who accrue the same amount of sedentary time in shorter bouts. 

 

“We tend to think of sedentary behavior as just the sheer volume of how much we sit around each day,” said Keith Diaz, associate research scientist in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and lead investigator of the study. “But previous studies have suggested that sedentary patterns—whether an individual accrues sedentary time through several short stretches or fewer long stretches of time—may have an impact on health.”

The researchers used hip-mounted activity monitors to objectively measure inactivity during waking time over a period of seven days in 7,985 black and white adults over age 45. 

Over a median follow-up period of four years, 340 of the participants died. Mortality risk was calculated for those with various amounts of total sedentary time and various sedentary patterns. Those with the greatest amount of sedentary time—more than 13 hours per day—and who frequently had sedentary bouts of at least 60 to 90 consecutive minutes had a nearly two-fold increase in death risk compared with those who had the least total sedentary time and the shortest sedentary bouts.

“So if you have a job or lifestyle where you have to sit for prolonged periods of time, we suggest taking a movement break every half hour. This one behavior change could reduce your risk of death, although we don’t yet know precisely how much activity is optimal,” Diaz said.

When it comes to exercise, any activity is good. Some is better than none, and more is better than less. Ideally, work in a full half-hour or hour of exercise each day, while trying to be active, even in short spurts, the rest of the time. But if you can only squeeze in 10 minutes of dedicated exercise at a time,aim for that.