Sitting all day at work increases mortality by 16% and is comparable to smoking.

One of the evils of our era is a sedentary lifestyle. While our ancestors spent all day hunting, planting crops, or herding livestock, today many jobs are done at home. chairto which we must add free time watching TV, playing video games or using a mobile phone in sofa.

According to various studies, Americans sit around 9 or 10 hours a daytime, which for older people is 12 hours. And in Spain the situation is not much better. Almost four out of ten people admit that in their free time they lead a sedentary lifestyle and 62% spend more than five hours I sit every day.

Sedentary lifestyles are responsible for 5.3 million deaths per year, slightly more than tobacco smoking, which accounts for 5.1 million deaths.

Against this backdrop, dozens of studies have been conducted to determine how a sedentary lifestyle affects the body, some of which even compare lack of activity to smoking. One of them was published in The Lancet with data from hundreds of countries and concluded that a sedentary lifestyle causes 5.3 million deaths per year, which is slightly more than tobacco, which accounts for 5.1 million. There are now more sedentary people than smokers, so the effects of tobacco are more lethal.

Life expectancy

And another study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, concluded that people who sit for an hour shorten their life expectancy by 22 minutes, while smokers shorten their life expectancy by an average of 11 minutes per hour. every cigarette.

These are just two examples. Comparing sedentary lifestyle and smoking is a “shocking” way to draw attention to the first problem, but mechanism of action Each of the two bad habits is different, says Maribel Marmol, president of the Association of Nurses (AEC). Now, he clarifies, “both increase mortality and the possibility of suffering from serious illnesses, so they are equally important for public and individual health.”

Tobacco, through its toxins, affects the respiratory, cardiovascular systems and other organs, and the “saddle effect” affects the metabolism and circulatory system.

In fact, tobacco affects respiratory system, cardiovascular and other organs through their toxins, and the “saddle effect” affects the metabolism and circulatory system, as well as at the muscular level, but “the result is the same” in terms of “countless health risks.” reduction in life expectancy,” the specialist concludes.

Risk of death

In fact, a study published in JAMA, which followed nearly half a million people over 12 years, concluded that those who worked while sitting most of the time had 16% higher risk of mortality and 33% more cardiovascular disease than those who work on the move.

Daniel E. Lieberman, an expert in the field of evolutionary biology, summarizes three main problems in the book Exercise: “The first has to do with what we don’t do while we sit,” which is movement. Second, “with increasing concentration glucose and lipids in the bloodstream.”

Sitting for long hours causes chronic inflammation that “damages tissue in the arteries, muscles, liver, brain…” and is associated “with numerous diseases associated with aging.”

And third, and “most concerning,” is the possibility that the immune system attacks the body due to sedentary lifestyle through a process known asinflammation‘. And chronic inflammation”damages tissue arteries, muscles, liver, brain…” and deals with “numerous diseases associated with agingsuch as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, certain types of cancer, multiple sclerosis, or arthritis.

little exercise

According to Lieberman, comparing a sedentary lifestyle with smoking is “exaggerated statementbecause “sitting is older than Methuselah, but the problem is not the fact of sitting itself, but the hours and hours of being still, of inaction, to which we must add do little or no exercise“by many people.

And there’s more bad news: an hour at the gym doesn’t erase the negative effects of sitting for the rest of the day. For example, a comprehensive study of 240,000 Americans published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that sports activities have decreased, but have not disappeared, risk of death associated with a sedentary lifestyle.

Sitting time cannot be compensated for, we must understand that sitting for long hours causes changes in our physiology and the only way to avoid this is to break the sedentary lifestyle.

Cesar Bustos

— Member of the Spanish Obesity Society

“Sitting time cannot be compensated We must understand that spending long hours this way causes changes in our physiology, and breaking a sedentary lifestyle is the only way to prevent it from leading to poor health. For example, it has been observed that sitting without moving for more than two hours reduces blood flow in the legs and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Therefore, the ideal would be not to think about any compensation, but rather avoid the trend inactivity for a long period of time,” points out Cesar Bustos, a member of the Spanish Society Against Obesity and an expert on physical activity.

“Active” sitting

Given this, almost the only “solution” is “sit actively‘, that is, interrupt a sedentary lifestyle at work or rest every 30 or 60 minutes, maximum 90 minutes, to take short walks, climb stairs, clean dust if we are at home, etc. “Stand up, forcing the muscular system to in general and legs in particular activated, may be sufficient to reduce the risk associated with a sedentary lifestyle and are simple and applicable at work or daily,” adds Bustos.

And the data backs it up: Another study, which followed 5,000 people over several years and published in the European Journal of Herat, found that those who frequently interrupted their sitting with short pauses up to 25% less inflammation regarding people who don’t stop getting up.

Given this scenario, the authorities’ reaction is: “inadequate“, say the interviewed experts. There are more and more campaigns promoting exercise and more and more health professionals are prescribing exercise as a “cure”, but “there is still a long way to go”.

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