Health Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

[tom_mai78101]

A study of more than 200,000 Australians adds to the growing body of evidence that people who sit the most die the soonest. It also found that you can't exercise this effect away, though exercise does help reduce it greatly.

The study's simple message is that spending more time standing and less time sitting prolongs life.

But while the death risk was much lower for anyone who exercised five hours a week or more, it still rose as these active people sat longer.

It is now well accepted that too much sitting is unhealthy. Studies in the last few years have found that death risks rise when people watch spend more leisure time in front of a computer screen or TV or simply sit too much.

The current study took a more direct approach, looking at the relationship of total daily sitting time to the likelihood of dying within the next three years, seeking to put a number on just how harmful prolonged sitting is.

Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest

Another study shows that sitting is really, really, really bad for your health. Please, just get a standup desk!

www.theatlantic.com

Okay, that's it. I'm going to make my New Year's Resolution to exercise more.

 

[Sevion]

... X-post from Reddit and a great response:

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/com..._more_than_200000_australians_adds_to/c4ezh0z

This is the usual math-illiterate popular hype. Looking at the associated scholarly article the main finding is that the "all-cause mortality hazard ratio" for those who sat 4-8 hours a day is 1.02, and 1.40 for those who sit 11+ hours a day. I will trust that they say they accounted for other confounding factors like physical activity (though it's hard to imagine a marathon runner who sat 11 hours a day). The studied population was aged 45 and over. So, there is a 40% increased likelihood of death in those who sat for 11+ hours a day, vs 4-8. That's not the same as a 40% chance of dying.
T̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶-̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶h̶a̶z̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶r̶a̶t̶i̶o̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶1̶0̶0̶0̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶d̶y̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶S̶o̶,̶ ̶1̶.̶0̶2̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶s̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶d̶y̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶1̶.̶4̶0̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶1̶.̶4̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶s̶a̶n̶d̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶0̶.̶0̶4̶%̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶r̶e̶a̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶t̶h̶.̶ (Oops, see note below. Hat tip to greenthoughts.)
More detail: In the US, the death rate for 45-54 year olds in 2004 was 423.1 per 100,000, or 0.423%. (It's lower for younger people over 1 year old, and higher for older people. For those 25-34 year old Redditors, it's 100.5 per 100,000, or almost exactly my erroneous orignal 0.1%. Cool! For 15-24 year olds it is only 0.08%)
40% more likely than 0.423% (age 45-54) is an increased death rate of 0.169%. (Back to 0.04% for 25-34 year olds.) So there's an estimate of the order of magnitude of the increased likelihood of death. It's still small for most of us, but age dependent. For those 85+, the US death rate is almost 14%. 40% more than that is 19.6%.. almost 6% higher. There's a difference worth noting.
From what I've seen of people installing standing desks in my office, you could be more likely to give yourself a concussion adjusting the desk height than you are to prevent your death.
I'm sure (some) extreme sports have a higher increase in all-cause mortality than sitting all day.
You should get up, move around, eat right, get exercise and all that, but you shouldn't stress over sitting on your ass and not having a standing desk unless you have a lot of other risk factors. 0.04% to 0.169% is not a huge increase.
That's why we didn't have piles of dead office workers in the streets as we moved away from manufacturing and farm labor a hundred years ago.
Edit: Adding a link to Cornell Ergonomics Lab (hat tip to harlows_monkeys), with an actual useful discussion of the ergonomics of the situation. Turns out standing desks may not be so great after all if you just stand there motionless all day. I guess there's a lot of history with factory line workers standing all day.
Edit: greenthoughts clarified the meaning of hazard ratio. I was lead astray by a quick search on the internet. So, the absolute risk is not something we have. However we can estimate the magnitude of it by using overall death rates, as above.

Rest of discussion in the Reddit thread.

 

[tom_mai78101]

I see that you brought up an interesting point of view. I'll read some more insights after midnight snacks.

 

[Furby]

I guess this is not good news for me, since I already sit too much at PC and also will sit my whole life.

 

[Sevion]

This is nothing to worry about unless you're like 80 years old. In which case you shouldn't be worrying about death anyways.

 

[LurkerAspect]

Yeah I'm pretty much screwed @_@ but's that OK, I'm not going to live extremely long anyways might as well enjoy it

 

[Sevion]

This is nothing to worry about unless you're like 80 years old. In which case you shouldn't be worrying about death anyways.

Anyone who thinks this will affect them at all is dumb...

 

[Furby]

That's the spirit! Who cares if I live tomorrow if I still live today.

 

[FireCat]

Confirmed

Really? Hmm "We need a Dr Google!" fast

 

[Accname]

At least a good sample size xD.

But how did they test it? Did they watch those 200'000 guys 24/7 for 50 years until the majority of them died?
Did they only count those who died to old age or illness?
I dont know, seems hard to make this sound believable.

 

[Inflicted]

I shall never sit again! This has changed my life! :O

lol. People are too concerned about their deaths. I think it's fairly obvious what should and shouldn't be done for an extended existence.

 

[tom_mai78101]

But how did they test it? Did they watch those 200'000 guys 24/7 for 50 years until the majority of them died?
Did they only count those who died to old age or illness?
I dont know, seems hard to make this sound believable.

This study first started on February 1, 2006, and ended in December 31, 2010, according to the source at the bottom of that news article. Then there's a 2.8 years of follow-up, so I don't really know. Out of that large sample size under a short time span (4 to 7 years, again I don't know), that's a lot of funding in Australia.

 

[Slapshot136]

This is nothing to worry about unless you're like 80 years old. In which case you shouldn't be worrying about death anyways.

I think of it in reverse.. younger people are less likely to be preoccupied with death, while older people think about it more and have more health issues, and they need to get their will done, their funeral arranged, etc.

 

[Jindo]

I see that you brought up an interesting point of view. I'll read some more insights after midnight snacks.

You should consider cross referencing your science related articles with Reddit before linking to them (or just research some of the points for a few minutes), I've been seeing more and more articles appearing on the front page about cancer or AIDS "breakthroughs" (or cures for them and other currently incurable diseases), imminent meteors and shady looking studies and more often than not these kinds of articles are over-exaggerated, sensationalised garbage that we really shouldn't be drawing attention to as legitimate breaking news.

That said, most of the articles you find are fine and it's great that you take the time to find them, I think just a little research on the more science-related ones could really improve the content people are exposed to if they see the front page.

 

[tom_mai78101]

Got that, Jindo.

 

[Varine]

I think of it in reverse.. younger people are less likely to be preoccupied with death, while older people think about it more and have more health issues, and they need to get their will done, their funeral arranged, etc.

I already have that situated. Life insurance FTW.

 

[tom_mai78101]

I already have that situated. Life insurance FTW.

What? There's an insurance for sitting? Man, I envy your country.

 

[Slapshot136]

I already have that situated. Life insurance FTW.

from what age?

 

[Accname]

You should consider cross referencing your science related articles with Reddit before linking to them (or just research some of the points for a few minutes), I've been seeing more and more articles appearing on the front page about cancer or AIDS "breakthroughs" (or cures for them and other currently incurable diseases), imminent meteors and shady looking studies and more often than not these kinds of articles are over-exaggerated, sensationalised garbage that we really shouldn't be drawing attention to as legitimate breaking news.

That said, most of the articles you find are fine and it's great that you take the time to find them, I think just a little research on the more science-related ones could really improve the content people are exposed to if they see the front page.

Without that "sensationalised garbage" we wouldnt have even half as much fun around here. Nothing better then bashing silly news articles.

 

[duderock101]

Well we're all meant to die soon

And if we don't, i'll just harvest organs off some Chinese person.