Sitting too long can increase your risk of death
Are you sitting down? Then you may want to stand up to read this, as research from the US has found that sitting for too long could increase your risk of dying – even if you exercise. The study found that both total sedentary time and sedentary duration were associated with a higher risk of death. The greatest risk was found in those who spent more than 12.5 hours a day being sedentary and when bouts persisted for longer than ten minutes at a time. But before you rush out to buy a standing desk, it’s worth pointing out the limitations to this study. For a start, all the 8,000 participants were aged 45 years and older – so may not be representative of other age groups. Also, activity data was only collected for one week, so this might not be representative of activity levels for the entire study (participants were followed for four years). In the study, a hip mounted accelerometer – a device that measures the magnitude of accelerations – was used to measure physical activity.