It’s well established that sitting too much can send you to an early grave—health experts even call it “sitting disease”—and that moving more can help you live longer. Now, research shows that if you’re able to swap just 30 minutes of your usual sitting time with physical activity, you can reduce your risk of checking out early.
The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, included nearly 8,000 adults age 45 and older who had been part of a national health investigation that included activity monitoring between 2009 and 2013. The researchers tracked the death rate of the group through 2017, and then crunched the data to estimate how substituting time spent sitting with time being physically active would affect the risk of an early death.
They found that trading chair time for time spent in easy, low intensity activity like walking reduced risk of early death by 17 percent. Increasing the intensity of that activity doubled the benefits: Swapping a half hour of sitting time for the same amount of moderate to vigorous activity slashed early death risk by 35 percent.
“Our findings underscore an important public health message that physical activity of any intensity provides health benefits,” said Keith Diaz, Ph.D., assistant professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in a press release via Newswise.
Previous research by Diaz’s team found that prolonged sitting is particularly problematic. People who routinely sat for an hour or more without getting up were more likely to die an early death than the who sat the same total amount of time, but got up and moved around more often during the day.
That study also concluded that people who sat for fewer than 30 minutes at a stretch enjoyed the lowest risk of early death, adding more incentive to get up every half hour as possible.
It all makes total sense. You have more than 600 muscles that make up your human body. You are literally made to move. When those muscles are put in park for prolonged periods, your metabolism tanks and your risk for metabolic disease like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease increases.
This study just adds to the tall body of evidence that if you move those muscles just a little bit more every day, they’ll reward you with a longer, healthier life.
