Long sitting hours can cut lifespan--study

According to researchers, movement is absolutely vital for the health of the human beings, and in fact, the body will not live nearly as long without it.

The more time spent lolling on the chair or sitting at the office desk, the shorter is going to be the lifespan.

“It's just one more reason to "get up and walk," said Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. "The message here is like everything in your life. People need to recognize that the things you do every day have consequences. And if you're in a job that does require sitting, that's fine, but any time you can expend energy is good. That's the key."

Women and men who sat more and had little or no physical activity had an even higher mortality risk: 94 and 48 percent respectively compared to those that sat less and were more active.

Study to assess link between sitting time and mortality
In a bid to establish a link between sitting time and mortality, the researchers examined the responses from 123,216 people who took part in the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention II study in 1992.

The participants comprising of 53,440 men and 69,776 women had no record of cancer, stroke, heart attack, or lung disease.

An analysis of the activity time and mortality rates from 1993 to 2006 revealed that those who sit less add years to their lives than those who don’t.

The risk was more pronounced in women. Females who reportedly sit for more than six hours a day were 40 percent more likely to die before those who sat less than three hours a day.

The danger was a little less for men, with them having a 17 percent increased risk of death. After factoring the physical activity level to the data, results still remained rather proportional.

Women and men who sat more and had little or no physical activity had an even higher mortality risk: 94 and 48 percent respectively compared to those that sat less and were more active.

Some plausible explanations
According to researchers, when a person is up and about, everything in the body is moving, the blood, the oxygen, the nutrients, the cellular respiration, the nervous system, and so on.

On the other hand, excess time spent sitting suppresses the immune system, which in turn, elevates the risk of cancer and other disease.

In addition, long sitting periods hampers the flow of blood through the veins to the heart which could result in dangerous blood clots, causing in turn, the blood pressure and cholesterol levels to leap.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Alpa Patel, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society said, “Several factors could explain the positive association between time spent sitting and higher all-cause death rates.

"Prolonged time spent sitting, independent of physical activity, has been shown to have important metabolic consequences, and may influence things like triglycerides, high density lipoprotein, cholesterol, fasting plasma glucose, resting blood pressure, and leptin, which are biomarkers of obesity and cardiovascular and other chronic diseases.”

The results of the study are published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.