Take a stand against sitting

Stand up and brace yourself.

The bad news about sitting down just got worse.

We’ve known for years that a sedentary lifestyle takes a toll on people’s health.

In the past, various studies have linked excessive time spent sitting with a host of ill health effects, including diabetes, heart disease and, of course, cancer.

Sitting for too long at a time has been linked to colorectal, colon, endometrial and lung cancers.

Now, a joint study by researchers at Dalhousie University and the University of New Brunswick published in the journal PLOS One has found that the risk of prostate and pancreatic cancers is elevated among workers in professions with a lot of sedentary behaviour.

That included, for prostate cancer, library clerks, medical radiation techs, telecom and line cable workers and police officers (sitting in patrol cars). Higher rates of pancreatic cancer were found in potentially sedentary jobs like, again, police officers, film processors, railway and motor transport workers and computer engineers.

The Canadian Cancer Society says Canadians spend, on average, 70 per cent of their waking hours — about 10 hours a day — sitting down.

Excess sitting can also lead to weight gain and obesity, which is a risk factor for at least 13 cancers, according to the Cancer Society.

Here’s another worrying fact about the ill health effects associated with sitting. Experts say that exercising alone doesn’t necessarily reduce risk — it very much depends on how it’s done.

In other words, while exercising vigorously three to four times a week is definitely good for you, people also need to avoid spending long periods of time just sitting.

Ideally, that means getting up and standing or moving at least several times per hour.

“Sitting for anything more than 15 minutes at a time is unhealthy, so we need to get up a lot,” said Dr. Gabriela Ilie, one of the authors of the study and the Soillse Scientist in Prostate Cancer Quality of Life Research in the departments of community health and epidemiology and urology at Dalhousie University.

We’ve become a society of sitters.

There are too many screens keeping us motionless. Many jobs require many hours behind a desk or the wheel of a vehicle. Even our education system, from public schools to universities, asks students to sit in place for long stretches of time.

What’s needed, said Ilie, is for people, as much as they are able, to try to inject more movement into their days.

Beyond that, targeted education and prevention strategies — which should be encouraged by governments — are key, the Dalhousie researcher said.

In other words, don’t just sit there. Stand up, move around. It’s a matter of health.