I read an interesting article on the Telegraph website last week based on a study published in The Lancet which said office workers must exercise for one hour a day to combat the deadly risk of modern working lifestyles.

Research by scientists at Cambridge University, on more than one million adults found that sitting for at least eight hours a day could increase the risk of premature death by up to 60 per cent. Scientists said sedentary lifestyles were now posing as great a threat to public health as smoking, and were causing more deaths than obesity.

They urged anyone spending hours at their desk to change their daily routine to take a five minute break every hour, as well as exercise at lunchtimes and evenings. An hour of brisk walking or cycling spread over a day was enough to combat the dangers of eight hours sitting in the office, they said. Currently, public health advice in the UK recommends just half this level of activity. But almost half of women and one third of men fail to achieve even this.

Researchers said the typical modern lifestyle of spending a day in front of a computer, followed by an evening slumped in front of the television was proving fatal. They also called for radical changes in Government policies, to encourage healthier habits.

The suggestions made by the study included:-

  • Office workers should get up and stretch their legs for five minutes every hour
  • Place bus stops further apart to encourage more walking on the way to and from stops, as has been tried in Colombia, Brazil and in Cambridge.
  • Build public gyms in parks and offer free classes
  • Close streets to cars at weekends to encourage walking, cycling and sport, as has been done in Columbia
  • Introduce a minimum of three hours physical education a week in primary and secondary schools

Lead scientist Professor Ulf Ekelund, from Cambridge University and the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, said: “For many people who commute to work and have office jobs, there is no way to escape sitting for prolonged periods. For those people in particular, we can’t stress enough the importance of getting exercise. We found that at least one hour of physical activity per day, for example brisk walking or cycling, eliminates the association between sitting time and death.”

A decent walk at a speed of just over three miles an hour was enough to achieve the benefit, he stressed. Researchers said breaking up their day, with short walks was beneficial. “Take a five minute break every hour, go to the next office, go upstairs to the coffee machine, go to the printer,” said Prof Ekelund. “Build physical activity into your everyday life.”

Fellow researcher Dr Pedro Hallal, from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, said: “The combination of sitting too much all day and too little activity is deadly.”

The studies could not pinpoint why long periods of sitting were specifically risky. But the scientists involved said movement appeared to assist the body’s metabolism, while sedentary periods could influence hormones such as leptin, which regulate energy balance. In the study, participants, mostly aged over 45, were classed by their levels of physical activity, from up to five minutes a day to more than an hour and by the amount of time spent seated.

This was compared with death rates over 18 years among the adults, who came from Western Europe, Australia and the US. Among those who sat for at least eight hours daily and managed less than five minutes’ activity mortality rates were 9.9 per cent. But those who spent just as long seated, but managed at least an hour’s exercise, saw death rates drop to 6.2 per cent.

Those who were sat down eight hours a day were 59% more likely to die within 20 years than those that were sedentary for four hours or less. The risk was almost eliminated if they did 60-75 minutes exercise a day.

The 20 year study estimates that inactivity costs the UK economy £1.7 billion a year. It’s also directly responsible for one in six deaths, nearly 90,000 a year in Britain mostly from heart disease, strokes, cancer, type 2 diabetes and dementia.

Researchers said that globally, more than 5 million deaths a year are linked to physical inactivity, a similar number to lives lost to smoking and a higher figure than that caused by obesity. It estimates that 37% of UK adults are completely inactive meaning they spend less than 30 minutes a day on their feet.

Steven Ward, executive editor of UK Active, urged employers to do more to encourage workers to be more active during the working day. He also urged workers to do all they could to find time to get moving. “This report is showing that inactivity kills,” he said. “When we realised this about smoking we tackled it, we need to do the same about our office culture.”

He called for changes in tax breaks, to encourage office workers to be more active, by providing free gym membership or activity trackers, in the same way that Cycle to Work schemes let employers loan out bicycles as a tax-free benefit. Polls of office workers have found that just one in five leave their workplace at lunchtime, while just three per cent use the time to visit the gym.

This week, why not take a few moments to reflect and consider if you need to increase your daily exercise. If that is the case, what are your action steps and when will you start?

This week’s quotation:

“Good health is not something we can buy. However, it can be an extremely valuable savings account.” Anne Wilson Schaef.

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