Reading This Post Will Kill You

By: Charles Cooper
Topics: In The News ,; Tech Talk

Here's the bad news: Working at a sedentary can damage your health.

Here's the worse news: Getting a bit of exercise into your daily regimen may not offset the damage that comes from sitting at your desks all day.

(Credit: istockphoto)

An upcoming review in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine offers the first systematic review of the existing scientific literature investigating links between occupational sitting and body mass index, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality. And what they found was not encouraging.

In the U.S., people spend an average of 9.2 hours working during the week - often in jobs which require a lot of sitting. Then they go home and spend an average of just over 2 hours every day day watching TV and playing (computer) games, The paper warns that for some, this increasingly sedentary lifestyle may affect how long they live.

"There is emerging animal and human evidence for biological plausibility of an association between sitting and health risks," according to the researchers who examined 43 scientific studies on the topic. "The chronic, unbroken periods of muscular unloading associated with prolonged sitting time may have deleterious biological consequences."

On a related note, the researchers concluded that prolonged sitting may lead to more snacking, which, in turn, "is likely to contribute to a positive daily energy balance and poor metabolic outcomes." (A polite way of saying that you'll get fat.)

While the authors said they still await future studies that more closely track the effects of leisure-time sitting and physical activity, they noted that four of the six studies they reviewed pointed to a higher risk of death for sedentary workers. Also, three of four studies they looked over pointed to connections between occupational sitting and a greater risk of contracting diabetes.

Because of some disagreements in the existing research on the topic, the study authors offered restrained judgments about the negative causal relationships between sedentary work and higher health risks. At the same time, though, they said there was "only limited evidence in support of a positive relationship between occupational sitting and health risks."

In an interview with the Health Behavior News Service, study co-author Jannique van Uffelen, noted that "sitting at work could affect health and for some people, current levels of leisure time physical activity may not be enough to offset these effects."

One counter-intuitive finding: Van Uffelen and her colleagues had expected to find a more pronounced link between sitting and obesity rates. But she said that just half of the cross-sectional studies found inactive workers with higher body mass indexes. How to explain the disconnect? Van Uffelen suggested that heavier people just sit more.

Charles Cooper is an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.
Follow on Twitter »

2 Comments Have Your Say
Email Story Send to a Friend
Share This Tell Your Friends
Tweet This Tweet This
More Share It

Add a Comment


by mswolfestock September 8, 2010 12:04 PM EDT: The more you sit, the more you have to work at creating opportunities for burning calories. If you drive to work, park at the extreme outer edge of your parking lot - don't fight everybody else for the spaces right outside the front door. (In my case, I add a HALF-MILE of walking every day by parking out by the street. It's a pretty big parking lot.) Do the same when you go shopping at the mall. If you ride the bus, get off the bus 10 or 12 blocks away from your usual stop. On the way home, just start walking BEFORE you get on the bus. Do you get an hour for your lunch break? Walk for 30 minutes of that break and I promise you'll feel better and you'll want to eat less. It's true . . . . . one little healthy habit will lead to another, and another, and another.; Reply to this comment


by rf35 September 8, 2010 5:47 AM EDT: And they did this study sitting in front of their computers, right? There's not much that can be done about this. People who can't or won't get their wide butts into the gym or out on the track are the ones at risk. If one maintains a workout routine and reasonable diet that keeps that person lean and strong, it doesn't really matter what one does for a living.; Reply to this comment