Many women spend most of their days sitting in a chair. During the first half of the day they’re at work, sitting at the office, then they sit down in their car in order to get home. When they do reach their destination, they sit down to relax in front of the computer or TV, and there’s little time left to do anything else before the new day starts.
But a recent study warns that this is a dangerous lifestyle to have. A report published by the American Cancer Society earlier this week, on Monday (July 13, 2015) warns that prolonged sitting makes women more vulnerable to developing certain types of cancers.
A group of researchers led by Alpa Patel, PhD from the American Cancer Society has found that the women who spend a lot of their leisure time sitting have 10 percent (10%) more of a chance of developing cancer. The types most often linked to sitting for hours on end are breast cancer, ovarian cancer and multiple myeloma cancers.
On top of everything, many previous studies have suggested that stringing together a routine of daily physical exercises could potentially help prevent the development of cancer.
But the new study has concluded that even if you do find the energy to hit the gym at the end of a work day, this does exactly nothing to diminish the 10 percent (10%) risk already acquired. Body mass index (BDI) and other similar factors usually associated with health and danger of developing various diseases (obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart problems) didn’t make a difference either.
Weirdly enough, the American Cancer Society was unable to find any link between prolonged sitting and the development of cancer in men.
For the study, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, the researchers looked at data gathered from more than 146.000 subjects, both women (77.462) and men (69.260). All of them were cancer-free and willingly signed up for the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort conducted by the American Cancer Society.
Between the years of 1992 and 2009, 12.236 of the women and 18.555 of the men were diagnosed with some kind of cancer.
The projects was inspired by the observation that modern people have spent a lot more time sitting for hours on end in the last three (3) decades. There are a few obvious reasons right away – on one hand most of us work in an office, on the other technology has rapidly progressed (and keeps progressing every few months), offering an infinity or leisure time activities tied to computers, game consoles and TVs. Daily transportation also plays a role here.
The American Cancer Society has put together a list of guidelines which advice people to cut down sitting in a chair for several hours in a row whenever possible.
It’s worth mentioning however that experts working on previous studies have warned that people who exercise regularly but still sit in a chair for many hours in a row may be at an even greater risk of developing certain medical conditions.
The research team did mention that further research is needed in order to understand why prolonged sitting poses a danger to women but not to men, and whether or not the finding still hold true when looking at a larger crop of people.
Many previous studies have also found a link between prolonged sitting and various medical conditions such as heart disease or a reduced lifespan.
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