Marcella La Cioppa A sedentary lifestyle is bad for you and now a new study has revealed that even for those who play sports, spending many hours sitting increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Well, not getting enough exercise is one commonly recognized cause of heart disease. Current guidelines advocate 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week as good for the heart.
According to a study published in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology, and presented at the American Heart Association’s scientific conference, spending more time sitting or lying down during the day can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality.
They found that exceeding about 10.6 hours of sedentary time per day is strongly associated with future heart failure and cardiovascular death, even among people who have reached the recommended levels of exercise.
“Our findings support reducing sedentary time to lower cardiovascular risk, with 10.6 hours per day being a potentially key threshold linked to greater heart failure and cardiovascular mortality.”
But the researchers leading this study say that exercise is just a tiny portion of one’s daily activity. Current guidelines say nothing about sedentary behavior, despite the fact that people spend much more time sitting daily than engaging in physical activity and that sitting has been identified as an independent cause of cardiovascular disease.
The study
This study investigates how much sedentary time contributes to the risk of CVD and has also explored how sedentary behavior and physical activity together impact the risk of atrial fibrillation, heart failure, myocardial infarction, and mortality.
Among the 89,530 participants from the UK Biobank study, the average age was 62, and 56.4% were women. Participants wore a wrist-worn triaxial accelerometer for seven days and reported an average of 9.4 hours of sedentary time daily.
Over the average eight-year follow-up period:
- 3,638 individuals developed atrial fibrillation (4.9%)
- 1,854 developed heart failure (2.1%)
- 1,610 had a myocardial infarction (1.84%)
- 846 died from cardiovascular causes (0.94%).
In study participants with at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week, the deleterious effects of sedentary behavior on atrial fibrillation and myocardial infarction risk were significantly attenuated. However, the highly elevated risk of heart failure and cardiovascular mortality remained prominent.
A limitation of the study is that it can’t tell where people spend time sitting or lying down, or why—such as at work—which could have different implications for health risks. Wrist-worn accelerometers aren’t ideal for posture detection and might misclassify standing time as sedentary time. A longer monitoring period may obtain better information about their habit and activity pattern.
Source: JACC
