After adjusting for other risk factors, sitting per se appears benign
• by MedPage Today Staff
February 21, 2017
Chances are good you’ve heard, “Sitting is the new smoking.” The catchy phrase has spurred many office workers to stand at their desks. However, the evidence for it looks increasingly shaky, a report on CNN indicated.
In one recent study published in The BMJ , researchers analyzed data from 4,811 British government workers over 13 years to investigate whether jobs involving sitting made a difference in diabetes risk. After adjusting for obesity, physical activity, and other risk factors for diabetes, sitting was not connected with development of diabetes.
Along with other studies, the research suggests that sitting, in and of itself, is not particularly unhealthy. “One possible explanation for the weak links between sitting and diabetes we observed is that participants were protected by their high levels of [overall] physical activity,” said lead researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis.