A sedentary lifestyle, almost as harmful as tobacco!

“Eat, move”, “walk at least 6,000, even 10,000 steps per day”. You have certainly already heard these slogans which encourage us to practice a sporting activity on a daily basis. Not without reason.

A new study involving more than 100,000 people has just demonstrated the significant impact of a sedentary lifestyle on health

Risk of death and cardiovascular disease related to physical inactivity

This work was led by Scott Lear, professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University, Canada, and Wei Li of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, and their teams.

Their study involved 105,677 people between the ages of 35 and 70, from 21 different countries. The volunteers were followed for an average of 11 years, between January 2003 and December 2021, and regularly questioned about their lifestyle. The results of this study were published on June 15, in the scientific journal Jamaica Cardiology.

Make up for sitting time with exercise

The researchers’ conclusions are clear: people who sit for six to eight hours a day have a 12 to 13% increased risk of premature death and heart disease. Beyond eight hours in a seated position, the increased risk even increases to 20%. Unsurprisingly, the risk increases with time spent sitting.

“Our study shows that the combination of sitting and inactivity accounts for 8.8% of all deaths, which is close to the share of smoking, which was estimated at 10.6% in another study..”

For Professor Scott Lear, “the take-home message is to reduce the time spent sitting. If you must sit, doing more exercise at other times of the day will offset this risk.“. And nothing stands in the way of stretching, up and down.

Increased risk of stroke

Another study published in the journal jama-networkon June 3, made the link this time between the risk of cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and a sedentary lifestyle.

Indeed, a team of researchers from the American State University of San Diego, California, studied the data of 7,607 adults between May 2009 and January 2013, whose average age was 63 years, and without medical history. of vascular pathology.

They worked from results of accelerometers worn on the hip by these volunteers, in order to monitor the frequency of their movements, and their intensity, for a week. The devices were worn for a minimum of 16 hours a day and had to record sedentary time, light physical activity, such as moving around the house, and more intense, such as brisk walking or cycling.

Conclusion: People who were sedentary for more than 13 of 16 hours had a 44% higher risk of stroke compared to those who spent less than 11.8 hours sitting. A risk that increases gradually because each additional hour per day spent sitting increased the risk of stroke by 14%.

A scourge that affects all countries

For Dr Gérald Kierzek, emergency physician and medical director of Doctissimo, physical inactivity is a “scourge”: “Our way of life is mainly sedentary. Most of our activities are done sitting all day. And the particularity that we now note, and this study shows it well, is that this way of life does not only impact high-income countries, but is also spreading in developing countries..

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns of this situation. The institution adds that people who sit too long have, in addition, “a risk of death increased by 20% to 30% compared to those who are sufficiently active“.

Introduce physical activity into your daily life

To reduce the impact of this sedentary lifestyle with disastrous consequences on health, we must reintroduce exercise into our daily lives, knowing that everything counts.

“This requires simple reflexes: take the stairs rather than the elevator, go down one or two metro or bus stations before your usual stop to finish your journey on foot, work standing up if possible, take a bike… So many small gestures that will have an impact both on prevention, but also on increasing life expectancy in good health, which is less than 65 years for men and women today, while the life expectancy is around 80 years“, encourages Dr. Kierzek.