Is Sitting The New Smoking?

Sitting has been branded as the “new smoking” for its supposed public health risks, especially for the people with sit-down office jobs.

Over the past few years approximately sitting has been linked with cancer, heart condition and diabetes, and even depression. This has led to a surge in media stories on the risks of sitting, even for people that do tons of exercise.

Then there’s the increase within the popularity of standing desks to encourage people to urge off their chairs to enhance their health.

But is sitting really that risky? And do we really need standing desks?

What does the evidence say?

Recent studies have investigated if not only the entire amount of sitting, but different types of sitting, were linked with developing type II diabetes.

The study focussed on if there was any difference between sitting watching TV, sitting at work, or sitting reception but not watching TV.

It measured sitting behaviors of a few number of middle-aged public servants and who didn’t have diabetes, heart or circulatory problems at the beginning of the study. 

Once the study took under consideration obesity, physical activity, and other factors contributing to developing type II diabetes, neither total sitting time, sitting at work, or sitting reception but not watching TV were linked with developing diabetes.

It was found only a weak association with the time spent sitting watching TV and an increased risk of developing diabetes.

This contrasts with a recent review combining the results of 5 older TV studies that showed a stronger link. But hardly any of the included studies accounted for obesity, a serious explanation for diabetes.

For people who are physically inactive, though, the story’s different. Two recent studies show the entire time spent sitting each day is linked with developing diabetes, but only in people that are physically inactive or both physically inactive and obese.

That’s not the whole story. At least two factors determine if sitting may be a risk think about its own right: the sort and context of sitting.

Type and context of sitting

It was interesting to take a seat at work, at play, and while traveling. And a growing body of evidence suggests that not all sitting is equal.

For instance, sitting down at work isn’t strongly linked with long-term health risks. Perhaps that’s because seniority jobs involve more sitting, and better socioeconomic position is linked with a lower risk of chronic disease.

It’s a special case for sitting watching TV, the sort of sitting most consistently linked with long-term health risks like type II diabetes, heart condition, and an early death.

People who watch a lot of TV tend to be of lower socioeconomic status, unemployed, have poorer psychological state, eat unhealthy foods, and be exposed to unhealthy food advertising. Also while watching TV, the posture may not be aligned properly as while sitting at work.

Each of those aspects of watching TV increases the probabilities of poor physical and psychological state. But studies cannot account for these complex influences. In other words, TV marks a constellation of health risks that go uncounted. So TV studies only tell us that excessive TV viewing may be a behavior that must be reduced, but tell us practically nothing about the health risks of sitting.

Physical activity and sitting

An important aspect of our study was that participants said they were physically active, reporting a mean 43 minutes walking each day, plus quite two hours of other physical activity a day.

A large recent review combining data from over a million participants found 60-75 minutes of physical activity each day eliminated the harms of sitting when it came to measuring death from cardiovascular disease or death by all causes.

One possible explanation for the weak links between sitting and diabetes was observed that participants were protected by their high levels of physical activity.

This suggests it’s particularly important to seek out ways to permit office workers forced to spend many hours each day ahead of a computer to feature physical activity to their daily routine.

As well as officials changing their behavior, governments got to provide infrastructure for active commuting, like bike lanes and secure bike racks at stations, and encourage people to use conveyance. Employers could provide incentives and facilities for active commuting, like providing showers at work, and promote lunchtime walks, encourage the utilization of stairs rather than elevators, and even walking meetings when convenient.

How about standing desks?

Adjustable desks that allow a sitting and standing option (sit-stand desks) might be an honest initiative, especially for very sedentary and unfit workers. But these aren’t an entire solution as people don’t expend much energy, or exert themselves, using them.

Even neat studies of individuals using sit-stand desks found replacing sitting with standing for 40-45 minutes each workday didn’t provide any measurable health benefits.

And people who use them might imagine they’ve done their bit and have a tendency to be less physically active after work.

Reducing the quantity of your time spent sitting is often a useful option if people don’t want to steer or cannot walk, cycle, or exercise.

But you'd need to crop your sitting by many hours each day to realize an equivalent reduced risk of dying from cancer and disorder from doing even one or two exercise sessions a week.

Although we tend to assume it’s easier to scale back sitting time than to market physical activity, unfortunately, they're equally hard to tackle.

Where to now?

Rather than being the “new smoking”, we'd like to consider sitting as a crucial a part of the broader problem of physical inactivity.

We also got to read behind the headlines of how the media covers sitting. Research just published shows 30-40% of media stories on sedentary behavior promote misleading messages, like sitting undoes the advantages of exercise.