Increasing Daily Steps Can Mitigate Sedentary Lifestyle Risks

A new study reveals that even highly sedentary individuals can reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and early death by increasing their daily step count, according to international researchers.

Study Finds Increasing Daily Steps Can Mitigate Sedentary Lifestyle Risks. Image credit: tasnimnews.com

Sedentary lifestyles are increasingly common, and we know they're linked to higher odds of dying from cardiovascular disease (CVD), greater risk of cancer and diabetes, and a shorter lifespan.

Those risks are lower for people with higher step counts and faster-paced walkers.

But it hasn't been clear whether highly sedentary people might be able to offset those alarming health risks with daily steps.

The more steps that people in the study took, no matter how sedentary they were otherwise, the less risk they had of CVD and even early death.

So those of us with desk jobs are not totally doomed, though the researchers emphasize that it's still important to try to reduce sedentary time overall.

"This is by no means a get out of jail card for people who are sedentary for excessive periods of time," said population health scientist Matthew Ahmadi from the University of Sydney in Australia.

"However, it does hold an important public health message that all movement matters and that people can and should try to offset the health consequences of unavoidable sedentary time by upping their daily step count."

Ahmadi and colleagues analyzed data from 72,174 volunteers contributing to the UK Biobank, a large long-term dataset established in 2006 that will continue to track participants' health measures over at least 30 years.

There was an average of 6.9 years' worth of general health data for each participant included in the study.

Participants had worn wrist accelerometers for seven days to estimate their physical activity levels, such as the number of steps they usually took and the time they usually spent sitting.

The median time spent sedentary was 10.6 hours each day, so those who spent more time than that were deemed to have 'high sedentary time', while those with fewer hours were deemed to have 'low sedentary time'.

Participants whose stats in the first two years might have been affected by poor health weren't included in the study, so the findings apply only to people who, for at least the first two years' worth of data, were generally healthy.

It's unclear whether the data included participants with disabilities affecting step count.

The team found between 9,000 and 10,000 daily steps were optimal to counteract a highly sedentary lifestyle, lowering incident CVD risk by 21 percent and mortality risk by 39 percent.

Regardless of a participant's sedentary time, the researchers discovered that 50 percent of the benefits kicked in at around 4,000 to 4,500 daily steps.

"Any amount of daily steps above the referent 2,200 steps per day was associated with lower mortality and incident CVD risk, for low and high sedentary time," Ahmadi and colleagues write.

"Accruing between 9,000 and 10,000 steps a day optimally lowered the risk of mortality and incident CVD among highly sedentary participants." (Tasnim News Agency)

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Vigorous exercise not linked to increased risk of adverse cardiac events in long QT syndrome

People who exercise vigorously and have long QT syndrome (LQTS), an inherited disorder of the heart’s electrical system that leads to chaotic heartbeats, do not have a higher risk of adverse cardiac events compared to those who exercise moderately or not at all.

Scientists map how deadly bacteria evolved to become epidemic

Pseudomonas aeruginosa – an environmental bacteria that can cause devastating multidrug-resistant infections, particularly in people with underlying lung conditions – evolved rapidly and then spread globally over the last 200 years, probably driven by changes in human behaviour.

Genetic study points to oxytocin as possible treatment for obesity and postnatal depression

Scientists have identified a gene which, when missing or impaired, can cause obesity, behavioural problems and, in mothers, postnatal depression.

Genetic study of age of puberty in girls shows links with weight gain

Genes can indirectly influence the age at which girls have their first period by accelerating weight gain in childhood, a known risk factor for early puberty, a Cambridge-led study has found.

New Study Offers Hope in Predicting Alzheimer's Disease Progression

A recent study has developed a tool capable of forecasting cognitive decline over the next five years for individuals showing early signs of Alzheimer's disease, aiming to alleviate uncertainties faced by patients and caregivers.

Reinfections from the virus that causes COVID-19 likely have similar severity as original infection

Using health data from almost 213,000 Americans who experienced reinfections, researchers have found that severe infections from the virus that causes COVID-19 tend to foreshadow similar severity of infection the next time a person contracts the disease.