THE WORLD

Updated Tuesday, February 6, 2024-15:01

21st century lifestyles have become increasingly sedentary. Sitting for a long time is a habit linked to our routines. But, with some exceptions, scientific literature highlights its harmful effects. For the first time in 2020, the World Health Organization's guidelines on physical activity recommended reducing sedentary behaviors due to their health consequences.

This is consistent with similar recent physical activity guidelines published in the US in 2018 and the UK in 2019, which also advise against prolonged physical activity. However, meeting these recommendations, especially in work settings, remains challenging and is not adequately supported.

A recent work published in

JAMA

asked about the impact on the body of sedentary work in which it was combined with various levels of physical activity among healthy people.

This study involved the follow-up of almost half a million people (481,688) for an average of 12 years. Those who sat at work had a higher risk of all-cause mortality (16%) and cardiovascular disease (34%) compared to those whose work did not require an exclusive sedentary lifestyle. Here there was no distinction between sexes, age ranges (the average was 39 years old), educational levels, smoking addiction, habitual alcohol consumption and body mass index.

People who sit during their workday would need to do an additional 15 to 30 minutes of physical activity a day to avoid increased risk and reach the same level as people in more active jobs.

What is the evidence on premature death from working in an office while sitting?

Few studies have scientifically examined the effects on the body of an eight-hour job sitting in an office. However, several studies have found an increase in mortality among people who sit for a long time, as well as from cardiovascular diseases (CVD), cancer and diabetes.

For example, research involving a sample of more than 200,000 Australians found an association between prolonged sitting and an increased risk of death. But these links between prolonged sitting and its impact on health are not consistently demonstrated.

Physical activity in the office to compensate for hours in the chair

  • Take a break from sitting at least every 30 minutes.

  • Stand up when talking on the phone.

  • Conduct meetings by walking instead of sitting in a conference room.

Analyzes with futuristic predictions generally indicate that sitting for a long time increases the risk of diabetes, for example, but not cancer.

Eight hours sitting in the office and one hour of sports a day

As the JAMA

study states,

an important issue is the level of physical activity carried out during free time. This is necessary to dilute the repercussions of sedentary work.

A meta-analysis published in 2015 in

The Lancet

concluded that the risk of prolonged sitting could be eliminated with 60 to 75 minutes a day of exercise. This figure is almost four or five times more than the current recommendation of the World Health Organization.

Later, the same team of researchers lowered the figure to between 30 and 40 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity per day to eliminate the mortality risk that office work increases.

Therefore, meeting current physical activity guidelines appears to eliminate the risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease among sedentary adults. However, it is less clear whether the findings apply to prolonged sitting in the workplace.

Thus, research published in

Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases

suggests that the adverse health consequences of prolonged sedentary behavior can be mitigated by maintaining a specific weekly threshold of physical activity, assessed through the personal activity intelligence (PAI) metric.

PAI is a novel metric for physical activity tracking, unique in its ability to incorporate personalized heart rate in response to activity, regardless of the specific nature of the physical activity performed.