A new study found out that older women are sedentary throughout the day. Sedentary behaviour is considered as a health risk due to its connection with disease and disability.
The researchers, led by Eric J.Shiroma from the Harvard School of Public Health, chose about 7,200 women for the study. They gave each one of them a measuring device to see how much these women have been physically active during the day. These study participants whose average age is 70, were instructed to wear the accelerometers for a period of one week.
Data from the study suggests that these women spent around two thirds of their time being sedentary. This time could be spent sitting down, standing still, or laying around in bed. They also found out that the older and heavier the woman is, the likelier she is to be spending larger portion of her day being sedentary.
Shiroma told Reuters Health, who wrote an article about the findings of the study, that he and his colleagues were surprised to see that sedentary behaviour are spent in short periods of time throughout the day.
"Most of us had thought that people were sitting a lot longer, and maybe people who are sitting a lot longer are at greater risk, but we're going to have to wait and see," he stated.
"We don't necessarily know where the threshold is for, how long is sitting too long?"
Researchers admitted that it is not yet clear what is more important- the total time people spend doing absolutely nothing or the breaks that they take to walk around or be physically active. Also, since the study involved women who were generally well-off, it is not yet clear whether periods of sedentary behaviour is the same for middle class and poor women.
Shiroma said that they are planning to widen the study to include more participants from other demographics.
The study was published in the December 17 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association.
