In the race against time, keep moving
It’s not enough for people to get regular moderate exercise as they age. It’s also necessary, researchers say, not to spend the other hours on your duff.
In fact, for every hour of sedentary behavior, the odds were 46% greater that people older than 60 would have some disability in ordinary skills such as getting around the house and feeding themselves, according to the study in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health.
Being sedentary will lead to problems “independent of time spent in moderate or vigorous activity,” concluded the researchers, from several schools and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Switching even a half-hour of sitting for activity helps, researchers said. Stand-up bingo, anyone? “A sedentary lifestyle is associated with a variety of poor health outcomes, including increased incidence for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and mortality,” the researchers wrote.
So just meeting the government suggestion of at least 150 minutes a week of moderate activity won’t cut it if there’s too much sitting the rest of the time, the researchers said.
The researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2003 to 2005, which in- cludes questionnaires and physical exams. They included 2,286 people 60 and older whose activity had been monitored.
The people in that sample spent almost nine waking hours a day sedentary, and 3.6% of them reported disability in their activities of daily living. The average waking time was 14 hours.
About 12% of them reported no chronic conditions. Fifty-two percent reported arthritis, 58% reported hypertension and 30% reported obesity. Being sedentary longer hours was related to older age, being male, being more educated and less wealthy, being a smoker and having a chronic illness.
Sitting has been getting a lot of attention lately, and health experts are specifically encouraging exercising while watching TV, walking during work meetings and standing while at a desk.
The researchers in the current study said as many as 5.3 million annual deaths worldwide are related to insufficient activity.
Pamela Semanik, one of the researchers and an assistant professor of adult and gerontological nursing at Rush College of Nursing, says she has sold her car and reads medical journal articles on a treadmill. So how much couch potato time is OK? “That’s the $64,000 question,” Semanik said. “We don’t know how much is OK.”