Sitting more than 10 hours a day may increase heart failure, death risk

ISLAMABAD DEC 03 (ONLINE): It has become widely known that living a sedentary lifestyle is not good for your overall health, including heart health. Past studies have linked a sedentary lifestyle to an increased risk of heart failureTrusted Source, heart attack, and stroke.

“Most people spend much of the day, an average of roughly 10 hours, sitting,” Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH, cardiac electrophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital told Today. “For this reason it’s important to better understand how sitting and sedentary behavior in general may affect health, and whether these effects may be mitigated by exercise and physical activity.”

“Cardiovascular disease is a major public health problem, and we know from many studies that getting enough exercise can be a powerful method of reducing risk of future conditions. “By contrast, the effects of sedentary behavior on cardiovascular disease are much less understood. Yet, if it can be better established that avoiding excess sedentary behavior is also important, it provides another means by which we can potentially improve public health by modifying movement behaviors,” “But for heart failure and cardiovascular mortality, strong associations with increased risk persisted even among individuals who were active, suggesting that excess sedentary behavior is associated with greater risk above and beyond the effects of insufficient activity for those two conditions,”