Sitting dead quickly

Spending too much time on a day of sitting can significantly reduce people's lifespan.

The Pennington Center for Biomedical Research in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wants to understand the relationship between sitting time and human life. They analyzed five studies involving about 167,000 people over a period of 4 to 14 years. These studies do not consider the lifestyle of each person, but only collect information about the time of sitting in place each day, smoking habits, the frequency of exercise during the day, the BBC reported.

Human life can be reduced by up to two years if we sit more than three hours a day.

The results show that if the average sitting time per day is greater than three hours, the life expectancy of the study subject may be reduced by up to two years. For those who watch TV for more than two hours a day, their life expectancy drops by 1.4 years. This trend is true for people who are constantly physically active and do not get harmful habits like smoking.

'Try to stand up and move every time you have a chance. For example, instead of sending an e-mail to someone, you just got up and called them, "said Peter T. Katzmarzyk, a member of the research team.

But Katzmarzyk emphasized that when people sit, the thigh muscles are completely inactive.

'When you sit and completely not exercise, your body will have difficulty controlling blood glucose , ' Katzmarzyk explained.

However, Katzmarzyk acknowledges that one of the drawbacks of the study is that most participants only estimate the amount of time spent sitting each day, but not by scientists.

A study by Australian scientists, published two years ago, found that people who watch TV more than 4 hours a day face the risk of sudden death and death from cardiovascular disease by 46% and 80, respectively. % compared to those who only spend less than 2 hours to watch.

Last year scientists found that those who worked in sedentary jobs for 10 years were 44% more likely to develop colon cancer than those who did jobs that required constant movement. Period. In addition, the risk of rectal cancer of those who are sedentary is also higher.

'If future generations mobilize more than we do, they will probably live longer. But today very few people in the world sit less than three hours a day. So it is an overly optimistic goal , 'said Professor David Spiegelhalter, an expert in risk calculation at Cambridge University in the UK, commenting on the Pennington Center for Biomedical Research.