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 Researchers gave accelerometers to about 2,000 people to track their
movements during waking hours for one week. Five years later,
compared to people who were sedentary for less than six hours at the
start of the study, those who had been inactive for at least 10
hours a day had almost four times higher odds of being diabetic.
“We are beginning to believe that being highly sedentary is
something different than not getting exercise,” said lead author
Bethany Barone Gibbs, a researcher in health and physical activity
at the University of Pittsburgh.
“Someone who runs 30 minutes every day can sit for the other 15
hours of the day at work, commuting, and at home and this person
would be considered physically active but also quite sedentary,”
Gibbs said by email. “On the other hand, a cleaning professional
might never exercise but might spend most of their day on their feet
in light activity – this person would be inactive but have very
little sedentary time.”
Globally, about one in 10 adults have diabetes, according to the
World Health Organization. Most of these people have type 2
diabetes, which is associated with obesity and aging and occurs when
the body can’t make or process enough of the hormone insulin.
As reported in Diabetes Care, Gibbs and colleagues explored the link
between inactivity and diabetes in 2,027 people ages 38 to 50 who
were typically overweight.
Compared with people who had less than six hours a day of sedentary
time, those who were inactive for at least 10 hours daily had more
than double the odds of developing impaired glucose tolerance, which
often progresses to diabetes.
One shortcoming of the study is that it only measured activity once,
at the beginning, making it impossible to know whether patterns of
sedentary hours changed over time, Gibbs said.
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In addition, because the study didn’t distinguish between sitting
and standing, it’s impossible to distinguish the outcomes of sitting
from the results tied to standing, said Mark Hamer, an exercise
specialist at University College London. It’s also possible that
people who are obese, which carries its own risks of diabetes, were
also spending more time sitting because they had difficulty moving
around, he added.
The study also lacks detail on what people do while sitting, that
may impact whether they gain weight or increase their risk for
diabetes, said Hamer, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“It may be that sitting is only harmful in certain contexts such as
TV viewing,” Hamer said. “TV viewing is often associated with other
poor behaviors such as junk food consumption.”
Even so, the results add to a growing body of evidence supporting
the health benefits of not just an active lifestyle, but one that
limits inactivity, said Peter Katzmarzyk, a researcher in pediatric
obesity and diabetes at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
“The results show that even after you account for the physical
activity levels of these people, the amount of time that is spent
being sedentary is positively associated with diabetes risk,”
Katzmarzyk, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “Even
in people who are physically active, the level of sedentary behavior
is an important behavior to modify.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1MCrZzG Diabetes Care, online July 8, 2015.
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