A new study has found that longer sitting hours have a direct link to increasing the risk of chronic diseases.
People who pride themselves on having a 9 to 5, sitting office job need to start thinking again. According to a research conducted by scientists from Kansas State University, the longer a person sits the higher risk he faces for being diagnosed with a chronic disease.
Researcher Richard Rosenkranz, assistant professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, collaborated this study with University of Western Sydney researchers Emma George and Gregory Kolt. They studied the samples of 63,048 males ages 45-65 from the Australian state of New South Wales.
At the beginning of the study, all participants reported whether they currently had any chronic disease or not and how many hours a day they usually sat. The latter information was categorized into four groups - four hours or less, four to six hours, six to eight hours, and more than eight hours. It was found that people who sat for more than four hours a day were more likely to report a chronic disease than people who sat for less than four hours.
It was also observed that people began to report more chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure when they sat for longer durations.
Researchers also reported that diabetes was most common among people who sat for six hours or more in a day.
"We saw a steady stair-step increase in risk of chronic diseases the more participants sat," Rosenkranz said. "The group sitting more than eight hours clearly had the highest risk."
Researchers say that this study is helpful to mostly office workers and people who have long sitting jobs like truck drivers, etc. Rosenkranz said that while in the past many studies have confidently reported that physically active people are less prone to chronic diseases than people who are not physically active, few studies have been conducted on reducing sitting hours in a day.
He notes that while people feel comfortable sitting in for long hours in their air conditioned office, it may be very harmful for a person's health because of lack of activity and low usage of energy.
Rosenkranz also stated this doesn't mean that people who sit too much don't do any physical activities at all, its juts that they don't do enough of it. Also, longer hours of sitting means lesser time to indulge in physical activities.
At the end of the study, the researchers state that while there is a definite connection between sitting hours and chronic diseases, it's still not clear whether longer sitting hours cause such diseases or only affect them.
