Sitting Time and Mortality from All Causes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer

KATZMARZYK, PETER T.¹; CHURCH, TIMOTHY S.¹; CRAIG, CORA L.²; BOUCHARD, CLAUDE¹

Abstract

Purpose: Although moderate-to-vigorous physical activity is related to premature mortality, the relationship between sedentary behaviors and mortality has not been fully explored and may represent a different paradigm than that associated with lack of exercise. We prospectively examined sitting time and mortality in a representative sample of 17,013 Canadians 18-90 yr of age.

Methods: Evaluation of daily sitting time (almost none of the time, one fourth of the time, half of the time, three fourths of the time, almost all of the time), leisure time physical activity, smoking status, and alcohol consumption was conducted at baseline. Participants were followed prospectively for an average of 12.0 yr for the ascertainment of mortality status.

Results: There were 1832 deaths (759 of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and 547 of cancer) during 204,732 person-yr of follow-up. After adjustment for potential confounders, there was a progressively higher risk of mortality across higher levels of sitting time from all causes (hazard ratios (HR): 1.00, 1.00, 1.11, 1.36, 1.54; P for trend <0.0001) and CVD (HR:1.00, 1.01, 1.22, 1.47, 1.54; P for trend <0.0001) but not cancer. Similar results were obtained when stratified by sex, age, smoking status, and body mass index. Age-adjusted all-cause mortality rates per 10,000 person-yr of follow-up were 87, 86, 105, 130, and 161 (P for trend <0.0001) in physically inactive participants and 75, 69, 76, 98, 105 (P for trend = 0.008) in active participants across sitting time categories.

Conclusions: These data demonstrate a dose-response association between sitting time and mortality from all causes and CVD, independent of leisure time physical activity. In addition to the promotion of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and a healthy weight, physicians should discourage sitting for extended periods.

http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2009/05000/Sitting_Time_and_Mortality_from_All_Causes,.5.aspx?utm_source=exacttarget&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Article3Button&utm_content=j18&src=Week%2039%20-%20ACSM%20Hot%20Topics%20-%20Sports%20Medicine&et_cid=236215&et_rid=pedronetoribeiro@gmail.com

Interrupting long periods of sitting: good STUFF

Geert M Rutten^1*, Hans H Savelberg², Stuart JH Biddle³ and Stef PJ Kremers¹

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that sedentary behaviour is in itself a health risk, regardless of the daily amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity. Therefore, sedentary behaviour should be targeted as important health behaviour.

It is known that even relatively small changes of health behaviour often require serious efforts from an individual and from people in their environment to become part of their lifestyle. Therefore, interventions to promote healthy behaviours should ideally be simple, easy to perform and easily available. Since sitting is likely to be highly habitual, confrontation with an intervention should almost automatically elicit a reaction of getting up, and thus break up and reduce sitting time. One important prerequisite for successful dissemination of such an intervention could be the use of a recognisable term relating to sedentary behaviour, which should have the characteristics of an effective brand name. To become wide spread, this term may need to meet three criteria: the “Law of the few”, the “Stickiness factor”, and the “Power of context”. For that purpose we introduce STUFF: Stand Up For Fitness. STUFF can be defined as “interrupting long sitting periods by short breaks”, for instance, interrupting sitting every 30 min by standing for at least five minutes.

Even though we still need evidence to test the health-enhancing effects of interrupted sitting, we hope that the introduction of STUFF will facilitate the testing of the social, psychological and health effects of interventions to reduce sitting time.

Keywords: 

Sedentary behavior; Physical activity; Sitting time reduction; Health promotion; Dissemination


http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/10/1/1