United States: Experts warn that spending a significant part of the day sitting, reclining, or lying down, brings a higher risk of developing heart diseases or dying as compared to those who are equally active for most of the day, proven by a study.
Watching more than 10.5 hours of TV is associated with an increased risk of heart failure and heart-related death in the future, even if a person is getting the recommended amount of physical activity, according to scientists.
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According to Dr. Shaan Khurshid, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, “Our findings support cutting back on sedentary time to reduce cardiovascular risk, with 10.6 hours a day marking a potentially key threshold tied to higher heart failure and cardiovascular mortality,” US News reported.
“Too much sitting or lying down can be harmful to heart health, even for those who are active,” Khurshid added.
These outcomes squarely tally with another study recently released in the PLOS One journal which revealed that people’s hearts aged faster if they spent most of their time sitting.
This was the case even when the participants achieved or surpassed the recommended guidelines for physical activity each day.
In the new study, researchers looked at the results from nearly 90,000 people who are part of the ongoing research program called UK Biobank. The sedentary time per day was 9.4 hours for the participants.
About 5 percent of patients experienced irregular heartbeat during an average follow-up of eight years, 2 percent had heart failure, about 2 percent had heart attack and about 1 percent died of cardiovascular disease, the study showed.
Over time, sedentary behavior added to people’s risk of developing irregular heartbeat as well as heart attack, according to the study. Men and women’s risk of heart failure and heart-related death was low up to sedentary behaviors of more than 10.6 hours in a day.
From that, the risk lifted considerably. Staying sedentary also raises the risk of heart failure and heart-related death if the individual is physically active doing 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise in a week.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Charles Eaton of Brown University in Rhode Island added that people vastly overestimate their activity levels and underestimate their inactivity.
Something as simple as swapping half an hour of sitting time with any kind of activity can reduce the dangers of poor heart health, Brown’s director of the Center for Primary Care and Prevention, Eaton noted.