KEITH GEREIN Is inactivity as bad as they say?

Too much sitting isn’t good for you, but smoking is far worse, study finds

Chances are most of us have heard the claim at some point, maybe from a friend or maybe from something we saw on the internet.

Sitting is just as bad for your health — and perhaps even more dangerous — as smoking.

Versions of the idea have circulated in the media in recent years, while companies have used it to sell products touted to encourage a more active lifestyle.

The problem is, the claim is very much like a cloud of cigarette smoke — largely without substance, yet still toxic when it spreads around.

That’s according to an Athabasca University-led research team that delved into all the latest medical studies to gauge the relative risks posed by both sitting and smoking.

What they found is that the two activities, while both unhealthy, aren’t even close in the dangers they present.

“Sitting too long is not good for you,” said project leader Jeff Vallance, Canada Research Chair in health promotion and chronic disease management. “But to put that up against something like smoking, which has been termed the greatest health-related disaster of the 20th century, just does not make sense.”

Some years ago, Vallance and his co-researchers in Alberta, Australia and Arizona began to see the phrase Sitting is the new Smoking popping up in media headlines and ads, sometimes accompanied by a picture of a skeleton in an easy chair.

The team even found an article speculating that employers could eventually be held liable for maintaining work environments that require too much sitting. The idea also started to creep into academic publications, Vallance said.

“To be honest, we got kind of fed up with it. But instead of just saying, ‘It’s silly,’ we decided to get

into the literature and actually put the two head to head,” he said.

When comparing sitting and smoking, the team realized early on some differences were just a matter of common sense. For example, smoking is an addiction, involving a physiological process that makes the body crave cigarettes and create withdrawal symptoms, Vallance said.

In contrast, he described sitting as more of a “habit,” since no one is going to go into withdrawal if they don’t get enough time on the sofa.

Likewise, cigarettes produce second-hand smoke that will harm people around the smoker, whereas excessive sitters are going to hurt only themselves.

The researchers scanned academic reviews analyzing the latest medical evidence. They found that for excessive sitting — more than eighthoursaday—suchpeoplehada 10-per-cent to 20-per-cent higher

risk of getting chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease over people who sit for two to three hours per day. For overall risk of death, those who sit a lot face 22 per cent higher odds.

But for smokers, the team found they face a nearly three-fold increased risk of mortality over non-smokers. Smoking even a small number of cigarettes each day makes a person 10 times more likely to get lung cancer than non-smokers, while those who smoke 40 or more times a day face a 40-fold higher risk.

“The magnitude of those associations are not even in the same ballpark. So to equate sitting with smoking is completely erroneous,” Vallance said.

The team’s article is published in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health.