Sitting in a chair for the 3rd hour in a row squinting at my stat homework the other day, I remembered a headline I saw recently – it was an online post about how sitting can kill you. I decided to look into the topic further for my blogposts to see if there was any merit to the statement.
As a Penn State student, I consider myself to be constantly on the go. I am always moving back and forth between classes and work, campus and downtown, my apartment to the library, etc. Also, as a Penn State Student, I find myself standing a lot (the Starbucks line at the HUB, free concerts, Football Games, THON). But if I thought about how much I sit during a day, the hour or three in class here or there in addition to the hours spent sitting at a desk doing homework add up. Last January, studies came out that provided shocking statistics about the harm sitting for too long at a time/during your day can do to your body and your overall health.
In 7 Ways Sitting Will Kill You, an article by Shaunacy Ferro for Popular Science, listed chronic disease (including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer), reduced life expectancy, kidney disease, poor mental health, obesity and metabolic syndrome, death from colorectal cancer, and death, just plain death as the aftermath one might face because of sitting to much.
Reading this is certainly alarming, especially since the article referenced different scientific studies they got the information from for each one.
Some of their significant facts include:
“A March 2012 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine tracking more than 200,000 Australian individuals 45 years and older found that regardless of sex, age and body mass, sitting puts you at a higher risk for mortality from all causes“
“A review study in PLOS ONE last year confirmed that people who spent more time being sedentary were 73 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome.”
“By reducing “excessive sitting” to less than three hours a day, the U.S. life expectancy could increase by two years, according to a July 2012 study in BMJ Open.”
At first glance, these statements seem shocking and urgent, but looking closer, most of the studies they cited were observational studies. They weren’t experiments that could prove enough of a causal relationship. None of the studies listed official confirmation their study subjects were randomly chosen. Sometimes patients were recruited, sometimes results were from a self reported survey, but all studies clearly had to make room for chance and third variable factors that could be going on.
Keeping this in mind, because of the size of the study, and biological mechanisms that support the notion sitting is not good for you, these statistics are hard to ignore. Especially because of the factor noted in this well blog:
“The researchers … found that those people with the “highest sedentary behavior,” meaning those who sat the most, had a 112 percent increase in their relative risk of developing diabetes; a 147 percent increase in their risk for cardiovascular disease; and a 49 percent greater risk of dying prematurely — even if they regularly exercised.”
Even if they regularly exercised. It is easy to look at all these articles as just more supportive evidence people should get out and move, but they are providing evidence (even if it is just from observational studies) that show that sitting still does as much damage even if you exercise the amount you are supposed to a week.
This hit home for me. I have to sit during my day. I have to get homework done, I have to sit at work, and when I graduate, I at some point will probably be working 8-9 hours a day sitting on my butt.
Even if these studies don’t prove sitting has detrimental effects on your health beyond belief, I think they hold enough significance to be taken seriously. What do you guys think? I would like to incorporate less inactivity into my life, but how? Anyone have any ideas? I will talk about this in part 2, my next blog post about this topic.
