Is it fair to demonize sitting, an activity that is done so often and constantly in today’s world? Does sitting pose an equal threat to smoking? Let's sit down to explore and dissect the myths around it.
Beginning with the hazardous effects of smoking which stand incomparable to sitting. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates show smoking increases the risk:
For coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times
For stroke by 2 to 4 times
Of men developing lung cancer by 25 times
Of women developing lung cancer by 25.7 times, more than 10 times as many U.S. citizens have died prematurely from cigarette smoking than have died in all the wars fought by the United States.
Smoking causes about 90% (or 9 out of 10) of all lung cancer deaths.
More women die from lung cancer each year than from breast cancer.
Smoking causes about 80% (or 8 out of 10) of all deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
As opposed to sitting or sedentary behavior any level of smoking increases the risk of dying from any cause by approximately 180% versus a 25% risk increase for sitting. Even light smoking (1–4 cigarettes per day) has been associated with a higher risk of mortality compared with sitting.
"Over the past decade, media coverage of sitting research has been widespread and the health consequences of sitting have often been compared with those of smoking (i.e., “sitting is the new smoking”). A recent analysis of news articles found almost 300 articles claiming that sitting is the new smoking.
These estimates correspond to absolute risk differences of more than 2000 excess deaths from any cause per 100,000 persons per year among the heaviest smokers compared with never smokers, versus 190 excess deaths per 100 000 persons per year when comparing people with the highest volume of sitting with the lowest."
“Given the current state of the evidence, equating sitting with smoking is unwarranted, misleading for the public, and may serve to distort and trivialize the ongoing and serious risks of smoking. The magnitude of the associations between sitting and health risks and corresponding absolute risk differences are small in comparison with the risks and risk differences associated with smoking.”
Regardless, we might be looking at sitting through the wrong lens.
This study found that the effect of TV viewing on all-cause mortality seemed to be stronger in magnitude than daily sitting time, though this might be partly due to differences in the accuracy of reporting these behaviors.
However, other factors may explain the variability, like, extended post-prandial sedentary time (happening after lunch/ dinner, as TV watching tends to occur in the evening post-dinner) might be linked with disturbed glucose and lipid metabolism. Besides, TV time is often associated with less frequent breaks and more snacking as compared to sitting done while working. Thus, associated dietary behaviors may explain some of the differences observed.
This directs us towards the hidden factor, Adiposity, which is associated with both type 2 diabetes and time being sedentary. This study found that TV time and total sitting were associated with diabetes, but once baseline body mass index (BMI) was taken into account, these associations were weakened.
This indicates the fact that it might not just be the sitting time that is harmful, opening up a host of added treatment options like diet modification, increased physical activity, sleep, and stress regulation, rather than just standing at the workplace which might be slightly better but done in the long run is just another form of sedentary behavior.
Importantly, the effects of smoking are irreversible, further emphasizing the danger it poses in contrast to smoking where the impact can be reversed by being physically active.
How little is needed to reverse the effect of being sedentary?
“Accumulating at least 5 min/day of stair climbing, 64 min/day of walking or any duration of running was associated with more favorable composite cardiometabolic health, whereas 2.6 h/day of standing showed associations of comparable magnitude. In contrast, the deleterious association of sitting time with adverse cardiometabolic health became pronounced when daily durations exceeded 10 h/day, although the association was no longer significant after exclusion of participants with prevalent CVD and medication use.”
Moreover, it does not matter whether the recommended amount of physical activity is spread across the week or condensed over the weekend to attain the resultant health benefits.
“For people with fewer opportunities for daily or regular physical activity during their work week, these findings are important”
In conclusion, Calling sitting the new smoking is a bit of a stretch and steals attention from the major health hazards caused by smoking. Also increased stress about sitting too much might be worse than sitting itself. Get moving!
Click here to read about the association between low back pain and sitting.
Comments