Who Is Less Active, You At Work Or Retired People At Home?

Who Is Less Active, You At Work Or Retired People At Home? - You, at the office, and retired people probably may be the same in terms of hours spent being sedentary.

Research carried out by the University of Edinburgh’s Physical Activity for Health Research Centre in Britain.

The team gathered data on 14,367 people to look at how age and sex affected weekday and weekend sedentary time.

Sedentary time is when you do any activity sitting or lying down.

The list of activities include working, eating, reading, watching TV, or spending time on a computer.

Many recent studies have looked at the effects of sedentary time on health.

Some experts are warning that more than seven hours of inactivity a day can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and an early death, even if people are physically active at other times of the day.

Middle-aged and sitting down a lot

The results of the new research found that men aged 45 to 54 spend on average 7.8 hours per weekday sitting down.

If you compare that with retired people over 75 years who sat on an average of 7.4 hours.

Time spent sitting at work is the main reason for their sedentary time.

The team also found that only the youngest group of men, 16 to 24-year-olds, are significantly less sedentary than the over-75s on weekdays.

Most of the time spent sedentary in this age group is spent in front of a TV or screen.

On weekends, those aged 25 to 54 were the least sedentary, sitting for between 5.2 and 5.7 hours a day, and in contrast the over 75s were the most sedentary, at 7.3 to 7.4 hours a day.

In addition, the researchers also found that men spend less time in front of a screen as they get older, with women peaking in middle-age.

Dangerously sedentary

The results now replace previous findings that older adults in Britain are the most sedentary age group and highlights the potential health risks of excessive sitting at work.

“Large parts of the population are dangerously sedentary, something we have underestimated. We need to tackle high levels of sedentary time in early and middle age, when patterns may develop. Our findings suggest that changing habits in the workplace could be an appropriate place to start, given how much time we spend sitting there every day,” commented one of the study’s authors Tessa Strain.

The findings were published in the Journal Of Sports Sciences.