Sitting Is a Silent Killer, Swedish Medics Warn Couch Potatoes

Cartoon via Soup Mines

By Michelle Fay Cortez, Bloomberg, h/t: The Daily Bail

Desk jockeys and couch potatoes beware: Too much sitting, and not just a lack of exercise, may cause heart disease and other life-threatening illnesses, according to doctors from the Karolinska Institute and the Swedish School of Sport and Health.

The more time people spend in a completely sedentary state, independent of the exercise they get at other times, the higher their risk of becoming obese, and developing diabetes, heart disease and cancer, the doctors wrote in an editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The dangers are greater still for people who do little exercise as it is, the authors wrote.

Public health officials have designed elaborate programs to encourage people to exercise, recommending a minimum of 2.5 hours of physical activity each week to stay fit and healthy. Individuals should also be encouraged to climb stairs rather than take the elevator, walk to the store, and take regular 5- minute breaks during a working day spent behind a desk, said doctors led by Elin Ekblom-Bak, from Karolinska and the Astrand Laboratory of Work Physiology.

“In the demanding and stressful society of the present, to prescribe these low and minimally time-consuming efforts may encourage many people with problems in maintaining a sufficient level of exercise,” the doctors wrote. “Encouragingly, research has shown that simple forms of prescribing individualized physical activity in clinical practice has had a beneficial impact on exercise level as well as sedentary time.”

While many people think of being sedentary as lacking in exercise, this is more accurately described as the time when the body’s muscles get no activity, the doctors said. They cited an Australian study showing that each extra hour women spent watching television boosted their risk of developing a group of heart complications known as metabolic syndrome by 26 percent, regardless of what exercise they took.

“The present amount of research supporting the independent importance of sedentary behavior is small but consistent,” they said. “People already insufficiently physically active will increase their risk even further by prolonged sitting time.”