Sitting Too Much? Reduce Heart Disease Risk Now

Sitting too much, even if you exercise, can harm your heart, so it's important to sit less and move around more.

Being sedentary increases the risk of heart disease even among people who exercise daily. It has a 40-60 percent risk of getting heart failure and cardiovascular death ().

A new study at Mass General Brigham published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology has found that a person with sedentary behavior for more than 10.6 hours a day is at a higher risk of developing heart disease.

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Risks of Sitting Too Much

Sedentary behavior is defined as waking activity with low energy expenditure while sitting, reclining, or lying down and does not include hours spent sleeping at night.

Most of the working people spend their day sitting without knowing the consequences of it. “Sitting too much beyond a vague awareness might be harmful,” said lead author Ezimamaka Ajufo, a cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

People think that they can do some exercise and counterbalance their long time sitting. However, sedentary risk remained even in physically active people.

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Exercise Alone Isn’t Enough to Combat Sitting Risks

Ajufo’s team, which included researchers from across MGB, analyzed one week of activity-tracker data from 89,530 individuals from the U.K. Biobank prospective cohort.

The study showed that while regular exercise can reduce some heart risks, like atrial fibrillation and heart attacks, it can't fully counteract the dangers of sitting too much, especially when it comes to heart failure and cardiovascular death.

Lifestyle Paths to Prevent Heart Disease
Heart disease can be of many types depending upon whether they involve the heart muscles or artery walls or heart beats. Bad lifestyle choices contribute to heart disease.

So experts advise to sit less and try to perform other physical activities like walking or standing few minutes along with exercises to lower the risk of getting a heart disease. Future research aims to study whether sitting affects other health issues and how to reduce sedentary behavior in the population.

Reference:

What are the risks of sitting too much? - (https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/expert-answers/sitting/faq-20058005)

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Source-Eurekalert