Women who spend too long sitting may die earlier

Conclusion This cohort study looking at the link between sedentary time in postmenopausal women and their risk of death, benefits from its large sample size of almost 100,000 women, and 12 year follow-up. It finds, as previous research has found, that increased sedentary time is generally associated with increased risk of death. The main risk was for women with the highest sedentary time (greater than 11 hours sitting per day) who were at increased risk of death from any cause and deaths from heart disease or cancer compared with women sitting for less than four hours a day. The links were less clear for women sedentary for between four and 11 hours a day. The study also benefits from adjusting for many confounding factors that may influence the relationship between sedentary time and mortality – including sedentary activity. The main limitation is that many of the measures taken in the study – for example sedentary time, physical activity, and medical history – were collected through self-reported mailed questionnaires. This may reduce the reliability of some of these measures. Self-reports would not be as accurate as looking at medical records or objectively measuring activity using monitors, for example. Though it is unclear whether self-reporting would mean that women underestimate or overestimate the time they spent sitting down during the day (but if you forced us to guess, we would go for the former). Also, the study findings were only obtained from postmeno...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Heart/lungs Source Type: news