People who spend more than ten hours a day sitting have a higher risk of getting heart failure and other cardiovascular issues.
According to Medical News Today, a new study recently published in the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology suggested that sitting for more than ten and a half hours is linked to heart disease and cardiovascular death.
Shaan Khurshid, the senior author of the study, told Medical News Today that most people spend much of the day, an average of roughly 10 hours, sitting. That is why it becomes important to understand how sitting for a long time could affect health.
Khurshid said, “Cardiovascular disease is a major public health problem, and we know from many studies that getting enough exercise can be a powerful method of reducing the risk of future conditions. For this reason, the guidelines are clear that achieving at least 150 minutes per week of MVPA is an important goal.”
“By contrast, the effects of sedentary behavior on cardiovascular disease are much less understood. Yet, if it can be better established that avoiding excess sedentary behavior is also important, it provides another means by which we can potentially improve public health by modifying movement behaviors,” he continued.
Moreover, for this study, researchers analyzed data from 90,000 participants with an average age of 62 years from UK Biobank. The participants wore a triaxial accelerometer for more than a week to monitor their movement throughout the day.
When researchers did a follow-up after eight years, they found that 5% of the participants, 2.1% had heart failure, 2% had heart attacks, and 1% died from heart-related issues.
Researchers suggested to decrease heart risk from sitting too long people should try to take walking breaks during work or look for some standing option.
