Despite your daily sports sessions, the fact of stay in a prolonged sitting position in front of a computer at work would have harmful consequences for your health. According to a study published in July in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise and conducted by Finnish researchers, people remaining seated between 10 and 12 hours a day while doing the 30 minutes of sport recommended by the WHO still present risk factors for multiple pathologies.
As part of this study, 3,700 Finns were equipped with a motion detector for several days, capable of determining their position or activity every six seconds during the day.
Thus nearly a third of the people studied were considered to be “active couch potatoes”i.e. people who, in addition to a daily 30-minute sports session, rarely got up, performing a total of less than 220 minutes of light activity per day. After checking their medical data, these people had worse blood sugar, body fat and cholesterol levels than those who exercised a little more.
At least 90 minutes of physical activity per day
People doing 30 minutes of physical activity and getting up or moving regularly – about 90 minutes of activity a day – or those doing an hour of daily exercise were found to be healthier and had on average 8% less body fat.
So half an hour”might not be enough“, says Professor Vahid Farrahi, lead author of the study, at washington post who relayed the study. Nevertheless, researchers have shown that moving a little more, simply by walking more regularlywould make it possible to be in better health than the “active couch potatoes“.
“It’s only been about five years since we started to understand that physical activity isn’t everything”, adds Raija Korpelainen, co-author of the research. In addition to the regular practice of sport, she highlights the importance of light and regular physical activities such as going to get your mail, preferring the stairs to the elevator or going down to get your coffee at the corner of the street: finally, the slightest additional movement can only have advantages.
Eventually, “the goal is to sit less”summarizes the scientist Matthew Buman, questioned by the washington post. According to him, the Finnish study “should make us think about how we spend our time” and possibly to rethink the spaces in which we live and work (perhaps working standing up like in Scandinavian countries). The opportunity to recall the main risks posed by immobility for our health.
Sources:
- How sitting all day can cause health problems—even if you exercise, The Washington PostSeptember 14, 2022
- Joint Profiles of Sedentary Time and Physical Activity in Adults and their Associations with Cardiometabolic Health, Medicine & Science in Sports & ExerciseJuly 2022
