“Move more and sit less.” You may be familiar with this refrain, the Department of Health and Human Services’ condensed counsel for improving your health and reducing your risk of chronic disease. Existing research has tied sedentary behavior to a slew of health problems in both children and adults, from obesity and poor sleep to cancer and Type 2 diabetes.
But a new study out of Boston suggests exercise may not be enough to undo the cardiovascular damage of too much sitting. A team of researchers in the Mass General Brigham health care system showed that an excessively sedentary lifestyle —spending most of your waking hours sitting, reclining, or lying down—corresponds to an increased risk of heart disease, namely heart failure and death. However, the meeting of exercise guidelines alone may not lessen those odds.
Their findings were published Nov. 15 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology . “Many of us spend the majority of our waking day sitting, and while there’s a lot of research supporting the importance of physical activity, we knew relatively little about the potential consequences of sitting too much beyond a vague awareness that it might be harmful,” Dr.
Ezimamaka Ajufo , a cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and lead author of the study, said in a news release about the research. “Sedentary risk remained even in people who were physically active, which is important because many of us sit a lot and think that if we can.