Do you sit 8-hours a day?

If you’re worried that your typical 8-hour day sitting at a desk job in front of a computer is harmful to your health, a new study has a solution – a higher threshold for the minimum amount of exercise.

A large meta-analysis study published in the Lancet has found that the ill effects from a sedentary lifestyle can be reversed by exercising for one hour for every eight hours of sitting during a work day.

More than 1 million adults, aged 45 and older from the United States, Western Europe, and Australia, were followed between 2 to 18 years during which time 84,609 individuals died.  What the results showed was that the more active you were, even if you have a job where you primarily sit the vast majority of the time, the healthier you were compared to those who sat fewer hours but were physically inactive. 

Now the catch is that the current public health recommendations for 150 minutes of physical activity of moderate to intense activity each week, is not enough to cancel out the possible bad health effects from a long eight-hour day of sitting.  This study recommends that you need to do more - at least one hour of moderate activity every day to offset the association between sitting time and mortality.  According to this study, the risk of death from heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers are reduced or even eliminated if exercise is incorporated into a healthy lifestyle.

Depending on just how long you sit each day does make a difference as to how much exercise is enough.  The study pointed out that if you sit four hours a day, at least 30 minutes of exercise is needed whereas an eight-hour day of sitting requires a full one-hour of activity. 

Researchers from the study made suggestions of brisk walking, bicycling or running as possible means of increasing physical activity.  They also pointed out that the hour of activity can be spread throughout the day in various increments as long as it totaled up to 60 minutes.

The cost of being physically inactive is burdening our healthcare systems by $53.8 billion worldwide as of 2013.  Countries like the United States bear much of the economic burden due to increased rates of heart disease, stroke, and cancer along with the costs associated with loss of productivity.

For those who find themselves sitting for inordinate amounts of time watching TV may want to take a break.  Researchers found people who watched television three or more hours a day had a higher risk of mortality unless you were very active.  Anyone who watches up to five hours or more of TV, regardless of the amount of physical activity, still had a higher risk of death than those who watched little TV.  It is not known why the sedentary act of TV viewing appears to be worse for your health than the sedentary act of sitting at a desk job all day, but researchers theorize it may have to do with the fact of performing a task at work as opposed to mindlessly viewing TV programs.