Nov 5, 2023
New research shows that there's a quick, effective fix for undoing the damage of spending all day at your desk.
Sitting for long periods, we are often told, is bad for our health; indeed, a new study has found that sitting for more than 12 hours a day - easily done if you have an office job, followed by a long commute or too long lying in front of the TV when you get home - increases the chances of an early death.
But the good news is that it takes just 22 minutes of exercise to undo the negative effects of a sedentary day.
For the study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 11,989 people aged 50 and above wore activity trackers for several days; their health was then followed for five years (during which time 805 of them died). In all, 5,943 people spent fewer than 10.5 hours sitting down every day while 6,042 spent 10.5 or more hours being sedentary.
The data showed that those who spent more than 12 hours a day sitting were 38 percent more likely to have died than those who sat for eight hours. But this was only the case if they didn't exercise. Their likelihood of an early death was reduced by every minute of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) they clocked up - and eliminated altogether by 22 minutes a day.
Mowing the lawn, playing football and cycling all count as MVPA. "This is the beautiful part," said study author Dr Edvard Sagelv, of the Arctic University of Norway: it need only be "brisk walking, or gardening or walking up a hill". A brisk walk of 22 minutes is about 2,900 steps.
"And, if doing more than 22 minutes per day, there was a lower risk of death overall. Basically, the more the better."
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