Sitting too much may not be harmful.

[mikeccolella]

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)30370-1/fulltext

 

This study indicated that 35.5 met/hrs per week of activity just about eliminates excessive sitting time health issues. IOW's my take on it is that sitting is not harmful as long as your physically active for at least 35.5 met hours a week. The quirky thing about this research is that TV time was worse than other sitting time. What does that mean???? The researchers don't have a clue apparently. I mean sitting is sitting right???

 

Are u doing enough? See this chart: http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/met-hour-equivalents-of-various-physical-activities. Or. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent or the best one here! http://media.hypersites.com/clients/1235/filemanager/MHC/METs.pdf

[drewab]

 The quirky thing about this research is that TV time was worse than other sitting time. What does that mean???? The researchers don't have a clue apparently. I mean sitting is sitting right???

 

 

This doesn't surprise me at all.  There is something qualitatively different about sitting down to a great university lecture, sitting to meditate, sitting with a friend or family member to visit, etc.  Staring like a zombie into the tube is just not the same.  

[TomBAvoider]

I don't know that there's enough detail in that study to really say abstractly that 35.5 met/hrs per week eliminates sitting dangers. Distribution of activity may be key. After all, you can reach the 35.5 number in many different ways. For example, it has also been suggested that the key is not sitting for a given stretch of time without standing up. As I recall, the idea was that you shouldn't sit (when awake) for a longer consecutive stretch than 20 minutes without taking a break - but if at the end of the 20 minutes you stand up (and better yet walk about) for a 2 minute stretch, you have earned yourself another 20 minute stretch. But you couldn't for example take 2 of the 20 minute stretches back to back (i.e. 40 minutes) and then compensate by taking 2 sessions of the 2 minute breaks back to back (i.e. 4 minutes) - because by the time you are hitting minute 25 without getting up, you are doing damage that then doesn't get erased by the 4 minute stretch. It's the same reason why you can't just skip all food for 6 months and then eat one gigantic meal consisting of 6 months worth of food.

 

So, you can erase an 8 hour stretch of sitting by a 1 hour of moderate physical activity, but what happens if you have 3 days of 8 hour sitting stretches and then one day of 3 hours of moderate physical activity? Distribution matters. That's why I don't trust a single number like "35.5 met/hours per week" - that may be true in aggregate, but not true of unusual distributions. 

[Alex K Chen]

I feel that sitting is bad in conjunction with other risk factors, but if you're CR'ed, sitting prolly isn't that bad..

[mikeccolella]

Tom avoider says: So, you can erase an 8 hour stretch of sitting by a 1 hour of moderate physical activity, but what happens if you have 3 days of 8 hour sitting stretches and then one day of 3 hours of moderate physical activity? Distribution matters. That's why I don't trust a single number like "35.5 met/hours per week" - that may be true in aggregate, but not true of unusual distributions

 

Good point. I too wondered about the possible "bliss" of sitting for 8 hours, though truth be told I would consider it torture" and like you rejected the notion. My policy is to get up and move around on a regular basis and I think that is probably helpful and at worst not harmful.