• Posted August 2, 2024

Sit a Lot? Exercise Might Offset the Damage to Your Health

People can offset hours spent sitting around with minutes of active exercise each week, a new study claims.

Folks who are sedentary for eight or more hours daily can lower their overall risk of death – and especially their risk of dying from heart disease – if they perform 140 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity every week, results show.

These results show the importance of encouraging people to work out every week, “particularly for individuals whose life circumstances necessitate prolonged sitting in particular, such as drivers or office workers,” said senior researcher Sandra Albrecht, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

For the study, researchers examined data on more than 6,300 people with diabetes who participated in the annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2007 and 2018.

“Managing the elevated mortality risk in this high-risk population is particularly pressing given the widespread diabetes epidemic and the tendency among adults with diabetes to sit more and move less,” said lead researcher Wen Dai, a doctoral student in epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School in New York City.

As part of the survey, people were asked to estimate the amount of time they spent each week performing moderate to vigorous physical activities, as well as their time spent sitting.

Federal guidelines recommend that people get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise.

Moderate-intensity activities can include walking fast, doing water aerobics, playing doubles tennis or pushing a lawn mower, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Vigorous activities include running, swimming laps, riding a bike fast or playing singles tennis or basketball.

People who sat around for eight hours or more daily had a 77% increased risk of dying early if they got less than 140 minutes of moderate/vigorous physical activity each week.

However, those who met the 140-minute goal had just a 20% increased risk of early death, results show.

Physical activity had an even greater impact on the risk of dying from heart disease, researchers found.

People sedentary for eight hours or more daily had a nearly 3.5-times increased risk of dying from heart disease if they got less than 140 minutes of moderate/vigorous physical activity each week.

But if they exercised 140 minutes or more, their risk of dying from heart disease actually declined by 11%, despite their sedentary behavior.

The new study was published recently in the journal Diabetes Care.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on levels of physical activity.

SOURCE: Columbia University, news release, July 31, 2024