No, sitting is NOT the new smoking

[Magical Realist]

I personally sit an ungodly amount of time during my day. Sometimes I get up and go take a nap. I could probably outsit any human on earth. But thank goodness I am not doomed to a smoker's early fate.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...105419.htm

"No, sitting is not the new smoking, despite what countless newspaper articles have peddled in recent years.

That's the consensus from an international team of researchers who have laid to rest misleading claims comparing the health dangers of sitting for long periods with smoking cigarettes.

In the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health, researchers from Canada, the US and Australia say that while research does suggest excessive sitting (roughly more than eight hours a day) increases the risk of premature death and some chronic diseases by 10-20%, this pales in comparison to the risks associated with smoking.

Smoking increases the risk of premature death from any cause by approximately 180 per cent, the researchers say.

University of South Australia epidemiologist Dr Terry Boyle, one of nine researchers involved in the evaluation, says media stories comparing sitting with smoking increased 12-fold from 2012 to 2016, and some respected academic and clinical institutions have also spread the myth.

"The simple fact is, smoking is one of the greatest public health disasters of the past century. Sitting is not, and you can't really compare the two," Dr Boyle says.

"First, the risks of chronic disease and premature death associated with smoking are substantially higher than for sitting. While people who sit a lot have around a 10-20 per cent increased risk of some cancers and cardiovascular disease, smokers have more than double the risk of dying from cancer and cardiovascular disease, and a more than 1000 per cent increased risk of lung cancer.

"Second, the economic impact and number of deaths caused by smoking-attributable diseases far outweighs those of sitting. For example, the annual global cost of smoking-attributable diseases was estimated at US$467 billion in 2012 and smoking is expected to cause at least one billion deaths in the 21st century.

"Finally, unlike smoking, sitting is neither an addiction nor a danger to others.

"Equating the risk of sitting with smoking is clearly unwarranted and misleading, and only serves to trivialize the risks associated with smoking," Dr Boyle says.

[C C]

I personally sit an ungodly amount of time during my day. Sometimes I get up and go take a nap. I could probably outsit any human on earth. But thank goodness I am not doomed to a smoker's early fate...

A regular staple of exercise performed within a short time will counteract the sitting. For instance, 40 or 50 push-ups a day done in a minute or two, would probably equate to the 45 minutes I spend walking up and down a hill each day. I also do 200 standing toe-touch exercises (halved in separate intervals), which amount to only 200 seconds once one is proficient at it.

Baby steps. Start out only doing two push-ups and/or two touch-toes, and then add one each day afterward to the count.

But it could be risky beginning to do such after the mid-fifties, when plaque is already clogging the arteries and placing strain on the heart. So instead consuming the extra time spent walking is probably the safest route.

I also do the push-ups (as yet extra insurance of avoiding Type II diabetes), but on the knees, because I realized I'd get a hiatal hernia eventually the way they were jarring the internal organs around when completely off the floor.

50 push-ups doesn't make one "muscular" like a guy, though I suppose bordering on the mild "hard-bodied" look of professional fitness women isn't completely out of the question. (I.e., that almost 50-year-old tradition originally descended from working out to disco music.)

How many push-ups can you do? Study finds men who can do 40 have lower risk of heart disease
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/heal...899802002/

[confused2]

I could represent the UK in a sitting competition.

A while back Mrs C2 was tricked into having her blood pressure tested on account (they said) of having to do it before vaxxing her.
She had blood pressure and she got a machine to check it every day and pills to go with it.
I'm a bloke and this is a machine (with numbers) so I had to try it.
Turned out I had blood pressure too - quite a lot of it - almost as much as the little machine felt qualified to comment on.
I asked Mrs C2 why she was worried about her blood pressure and she said it was because it increased the risk of blood vessels bursting in the brain and turning the person into a vegetable and she didn't want to put me in the position of having to look after a vegetable [probably also did not think I would look after a vegetable].
I self-prescribed a program of daily walks. My destination is often a cafe about 2 miles away. The first time I got there I looked for the cheapest thing to eat which turned out to be a sausage roll so I asked for one .. except I didn't .. turns out I have great difficulty saying "sausage roll" after walking 2 miles. I get home and sit for a while and I can say "sausage roll" again so it seems sitting is the cure for exercise rather than vice-versa. Yesterday (really) I checked my blood pressure and it was 'normal' .. either a few weeks of gentle exercise is enough to bring blood pressure down from v. high to normal or 120 is just roughly half way between 200 and zero. Checked again today .. maybe I'm just bouncing around at the high end of normal which is a good result except it has seriously cut into my sitting down time.