2023-10-31 15:00:22
Ten thousand steps and more. Readers of this column know this refrain: physical activity is good for your health, a sedentary lifestyle is a scourge. The English have an expression: « sitting is the new smoking » (“sitting is the new smoking”).
“Despite this formal evidence which accumulates every day, our society is facing a veritable societal tsunami of physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyle”, deplores François Carré, sports cardiologist at CHU Pontchaillou in Rennes, also president of the Pour une France en forme collective. The chair has become an addiction. An addiction that kills.
The figures are edifying: according to the National Observatory of Physical Activities and Sedentary Life (Onaps), we are sedentary beyond seven hours. The time spent sitting, particularly at school and in front of screens, represents 55% of the day for primary school children and 75% for adolescents aged 14-15. “The fight once morest a sedentary lifestyle must be the priority, a common thread for (…) public health prevention at all ages of life”insists the former deputy Régis Juanico, author of Let’s move ! Manifesto for more active lifestyles (L’Aube-Jean Jaurès Foundation, 146 pages, 16 euros).
Jogging, swimming or brisk walking
However, the data is clear: a sedentary lifestyle is associated with a major risk of disease and constitutes one of the main risk factors for premature death linked to non-communicable diseases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Risks underestimated by the population.
To study how physical activity can modify the harms of a sedentary lifestyle, Norwegian researchers analyzed data from four cohort studies of adults over 50 from Norway, Sweden and the United States. Nearly 12,000 people in total wore activity trackers for four days and were followed for two years, taking into account data such as gender, education level, weight and height, consumption of tobacco and alcohol, any declared illnesses, etc.
Conclusion: being sedentary for more than twelve hours per day was associated with a 38% higher mortality risk, but only among individuals practicing less than twenty-two minutes per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA, which is defined when breathing accelerates, as with jogging, swimming or even brisk walking), specifies the study published on October 24 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Which corresponds to 154 minutes per week, the WHO recommendations. “Such a level might be enough to compensate for the increased risk of death due to an overly sedentary lifestyle”the researchers argue.
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