Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but…a new study tells us that the time you spend sitting on your butt is shortening your life.

Yep. You heard right.

• Watching tv
• Surfing the net
• Driving your car
• Working at your desk
• Even reading your favorite blog – Health Habits

All of these activities are killing you.

And wait, it gets worse.

According to the researchers, being physically active doesn’t make up for all those hours spent sitting on your butt.

The Research

Researchers analyzed survey responses from 123,216 individuals (53,440 men and 69,776 women) who had no history of cancer, heart attack, stroke, or emphysema/other lung disease enrolled in the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention II study in 1992.

They examined the amount of time spent sitting and physical activity in relation to mortality between 1993 and 2006.

They found that more leisure time spent sitting was associated with higher risk of mortality, particularly in women.

• Women who reported more than six hours per day of sitting were 37 % more likely to die during the time period studied than those who sat fewer than 3 hours a day.
• Men who sat more than 6 hours a day were 18 % more likely to die than those who sat fewer than 3 hours per day.

Associations were stronger for cardiovascular disease mortality than for cancer mortality.

And while being physically active didn’t eliminate the effect of all those hours of sitting, when they compared the combination of excessive sitting with a lack of physical activity, the picture looked even worse.

• Women and men who both sat more and were less physically were 94% and 48% more likely, respectively, to die compared with those who reported sitting the least and being most active.

So…Let’s Recap

Women

• With exercise, women who sit were 37% more likely to kick the bucket
• Without exercise, that number jumps to 94%

Men

• With exercise, male couch potatoes were 18% more likely to croak
• Without exercise – 48% more likely

And why do they think that sitting on our collective keisters is so bad for us?

“Several factors could explain the positive association between time spent sitting and higher all-cause death rates,” said Dr. Patel. “Prolonged time spent sitting, independent of physical activity, has been shown to have important metabolic consequences, and may influence things like triglycerides, high density lipoprotein, cholesterol, fasting plasma glucose, resting blood pressure, and leptin, which are biomarkers of obesity and cardiovascular and other chronic diseases.”

Conclusion

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Get off your butt and move around a little

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Reference

• the study
• EurekAlert

Sitting on your butt is going to kill you is a post from: Health and Fitness articles

Smoking + Obesity + Inactivity + High Blood Sugar +....

According to a new study by Harvard public health researchers, the leading preventable risk factors for premature death in the United States are:

1. Smoking: 467,000 deaths.
   
2. High blood pressure: 395,000 deaths.
3. Overweight-obesity: 216,000 deaths.
4. Inadequate physical activity and inactivity: 191,000 deaths.
5. High blood sugar: 190,000 deaths.
6. High LDL cholesterol: 113,000 deaths.
7. High dietary salt: 102,000 deaths.
8. Low dietary omega-3 fatty acids (seafood): 84,000 deaths.
9. High dietary trans fatty acids: 82,000 deaths.
10. Alcohol use: 64,000 deaths.
11. Low intake of fruits and vegetables: 58,000 deaths.
12. Low dietary poly-unsaturated fatty acids: 15,000 deaths.

This study is the most comprehensive look at how diet, lifestyle and various other chronic disease risk factors contribute to mortality in the U.S.

And it produced some interesting observations:

• Smoking is responsible for approximately 20% of all deaths in the U.S.
• High blood pressure is responsible for 1 in 6 deaths
• Obesity + physical inactivity = 407,000 deaths per year ≈ 17% of all deaths
  
• High blood pressure kills 5x as many women as breast cancer
• 70% of the alcohol related deaths happened to men…way to go guys
• High blood sugar killed 3x as many people as alcohol
• 2/3 of the deaths attributed to high blood sugar, obesity and high blood pressure occurred in only 10-33% of the overall population.

• 1,051,000 deaths can be attributed to poor dietary choices. That’s 45% of all deaths.

Maybe you should print this out and stick it to your fridge.

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Related Posts

• The Evolution of Health Habits
• Red Meat Kills?
• The link between belly fat, depression, diabetes and CVD
• You drink pop = You get fat
• Obesity: Insulin trumps Genetics
  

Reference

• PLoS Medicine
• PDF copy of the full study
• EurekAlert review of the study
  

The Top 12 PREVENTABLE Causes of Death is a post from: Health and Fitness articles

While it is not an entirely new practice over there, it would be revolutionary on this side of the pond.

Imagine this; instead of billions upon billions of dollars being spent on treating disease, we spent a fraction of that money on preventing disease.

In 2000, the total cost of obesity in the United States was estimated to be $117 billion. About $61 billion was for direct medical costs, and $56 billion was for indirect costs.

That number is likely to increase as the Percentage of Adults Who Report Being Obese, increases year after year.

A study by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has recently estimated that each physically-active person saves the health care system over $300 annually relative to an inactive person.

With the current U.S. population at 303,980,933, that would work out to a potential savings of $91,194,279,900

In Canada:

• A study done in 1995 for the Ontario Government called The Relationship between Physical Fitness and the Cost of Health Care, estimated that OHIP medical claim costs could be reduced by $31 million a year if all Ontario adults (aged 20-69) had at least an average level of fitness.
• Based on CDC study mentioned above, the 63% of Canadians who are still inactive cost the health system $5.7B more than if they were active.
• In the Economic Burden of Illness in Canada, Health Canada reports that the total direct cost (drugs, physicians, hospitals, research) of illness in 1993 was $44 billion out of an overall cost for health care in Canada of $70 billion.Moreover, the indirect costs such as time lost due to long-term and short-term disabilities, and the present value of future productivity lost due to premature mortality and illness in Canada represents an estimated economic value of $129 billion — nearly 21% of the GDP. Reducing the number of inactive Canadians by a further 10% would result in an additional saving of $5 billion.

So what do we do?

In a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Physical Activity Using Bike/Pedestrian Trails, it was found that every $1 investment (construction, maintenance, equipment and travel) in exercise trails led to $2.94 in direct medical benefit.

A 2004 paper, published the in American Journal of Preventive Medicine has a variety of intervention strategies.

But at the end of the day, all government can do is try to coax us, bribe us or threaten us into adopting a healthier lifestyle.

Ultimately, it is up to the individual to make the conscious decision. Is the benefit of living an active and healthy life worth the cost?

Is it?

Disease Prevention with an Exercise Prescription is a post from: Health and Fitness articles