Sitting around is waiting for an early death

MIDDLE-AGED adults who sit for more than nine hours a day are doubling their risk of early death, but walking briskly for 24 minutes can help extend life, a study suggests.

Previous research has found that sedentary behaviour is bad and physical activity is good for health. But a team from the University of Leicester and the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo wanted to determine how lazy behaviour impacts early death, and analysed eight large studies.

During the follow-up period of more than five years, 5.9 per cent of the 36,000 subjects had died. Deaths fell steeply as the amount of physical activity increased to a plateau of around 300 minutes (five hours) per day of light-intensity physical activity, such as walking, or 24 minutes per day of moderate-intensity activity, which includes jogging, tennis or heavy gardening.

However, the risk of dying early more than doubled for those who spent more than nine-and-a-half hours sitting down.

Prof Tom Yates, the study’s co-author and a physical activity and health expert at the University of Leicester, said: “This study suggests health may be optimised with just 24 minutes per day of brisk walking or other forms of moderate-intensity physical activity.

“Another important finding was that spending 9.5 hours or more each day sedentary – essentially sitting – was associated with a statistically significant increased risk of death, with each hour more above this threshold increasing the risk of death further.”

The results of the study were published in the BMJ.

‘Health may be optimised with just 24 minutes per day of brisk walking or other moderate-intensity activity’