‘Sitting for too long may cause diabetes, heart diseases’

Lately, for many people, work means long hours of sitting, with rare pauses for a walk. While many, especially adults who are used to this type of sedentary lifestyle might easily dismiss it as a norm, it is, however, raising concerns among health advocates and medical practitioners.

According to them, prolonged sitting comes with several health concerns including obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, especially among people with risk factors.

A Consultant Physician and Cardiologist, Dr. John Asekhame, told PUNCH Healthwise in an exclusive interview that sitting for too long is dangerous to health.

The specialist, who works with Providence Multi-Specialty Hospital, Abuja, said though not applicable to everyone, some people are susceptible to developing cardiovascular diseases by sitting for too long.

He said, “Sitting for too long increases your risk for obesity, which increases your risk of adverse cardiovascular diseases.  It is recommended that people don’t sit for too long.

“Some people when they sit for too long start to have swollen legs and other conditions. So, the ideal practice should be to stand up probably after 30 minutes, exercise, and walk around or shake your body instead of being sedentary for a long time.

“Sitting for too long means that you are not expending energy or burning excess fat or energy, which can increase your risk of converting what you ate into fat.

“When that goes on for too long, you can develop what is called insulin resistance. So, insulin resistance can increase your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.”

Asekhame reiterated that sitting for too long also increases the risk of developing diabetes in people who those predisposed to it, warning that the medical condition on its own can cause stroke and heart attack even when the blood pressure is normal”.

Continuing, the physician said, “If you sit for too long, your blood will not circulate like that of someone who is moving around.

“Reduced blood flow can increase your risk of getting what is called thrombosis formation and can increase the risk of developing blood clots.

“If those blood clots dislodge and drop in the heart, they can cause a heart attack,  if they drop in the lungs,  they can cause pulmonary embolism.  If they enter the brain, they can cause strokes.”

He advised people to shun sedentary lifestyles, exercise and be healthy.

For those already living with cardiovascular diseases, he advised them to go for a cardiovascular risk assessment.

The American Heart Association also confirmed that a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and death.

In an advisory published on its website titled, ‘Sitting too much may raise heart disease risk’, the foundation expressed worry that sedentary time is rising, lamenting that adults spend more than nine hours a day being sedentary.

AHA said people are spending an estimated six to eight hours a day engaged in sedentary behaviours that include sitting, driving, reading, TV viewing and computer use.

“Our bodies were built to move all day. They weren’t built to be idle and stationary with a metabolic rate similar to a person in a coma.

“When we’re depriving ourselves of that kind of essential muscular activity throughout the day, very potent things happen inside our bodies”, it noted.

Also speaking, a Senior Consultant at the Lagos State Health Service Commission, Dr.-Sylvester Ikhisemojie, said indeed,

sitting for too long causes adverse health events.

According to him, lack of physical activity is now known to be the precursor of muscle mass, loss of bone density, progressive weight gain, and deep vein thrombosis.

“This has spurned a new term in the medical lexicon known as ‘The Sitting Disease’, a description of a range of effects that prolonged sitting can have on our overall health.

“These problems have been variously identified to include diabetes, high blood pressure, formation of blood clots in the lower limbs and elsewhere in the body, and the incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which itself is a relatively new disease condition.

“All these problems, in addition to the ones already named in the paragraph above, constitute a significant threat to our overall health and life expectancy.

“The cumulative effects of these problems cannot be stressed too strongly. At the close of work and following the long hours of sitting at our desks in the office, we take another long drive back home, perhaps take a shower and head to the dinner table before retiring to the sofa or couch for several more hours watching television.

“Home videos, Netflix, and a variety of entertainment channels keep us engaged in the sitting position for several more hours in the early evening before we retire to bed. We wake up the following morning and continue the damaging cycle of activity.

“Such physical inactivity has now also been linked to depression, certain types of cancer, and diminishing levels of physical fitness”, he explained.

Ikhisemojie noted that the human body is designed to move and ambulate.

In an article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal, the authors said there was an association between sedentary time and hospitalizations, all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer in adults independent of physical activity.

The authors said prolonged sedentary time was independently associated with deleterious health outcomes, regardless of physical activity.