Does Sitting Increase Risk of Diabetes?
Sitting might not be associated with an increased risk of diabetes, according to a recent study.1
While sedentary behaviors have been linked to metabolic risk, the link between sitting and diabetes in prior studies often does not account for baseline adiposity.
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In their study, researchers used data from the Whitehall II study, which included 4811 middle aged and older British civil servants, and followed-up with participants for 13 years. Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, employment grade, smoking, alcohol intake, fruit and vegetable consumption, self-rated health, physical functioning, walking and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, and body mass index.
Hazard models were used to examine associations between total sitting time and context-specific sitting time. Context-specific sitting time was defined as work, television, and non-TV leisure time sitting at home. Incidences of diabetes were defined using glucose levels.
Overall, 402 cases of diabetes occurred, but there was little evidence linking sitting and diabetes, and any weak associations were limited to TV sitting time.
“Total sitting (HR of the top compared with the bottom group: 1.26; 95% CI 1.00 to 1.62; p=0.01) and TV sitting (1.33; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.88; p=0.05) showed associations with incident diabetes; once BMI was included in the model these associations were attenuated for both total sitting (1.19; 95% CI 0.92 to 1.55; p=0.22) and TV sitting (1.31; 95% CI 0.96 to 1.76; p=0.14),” the researchers wrote.
Their study suggested that there is little evidence that links sitting and diabetes.
"[A] reason for our results could be that these London-based workers were protected by the large amounts of walking they reported, which was nearly 45 minutes per day on average. With most white-collar workers forced to spend many hours each day in front of a computer not moving, this amount of physical activity may be an absolute necessity to maintain good health,” the researchers said.2
—Melissa Weiss
Reference:
1] Stamatakis E, Pulsford RM, Brunner EJ, et al. Sitting behavior is not associated with incident diabetes over 13 years: the Whitehall II cohort study [published online January 25, 2017]. British Journal of Sports Medicine. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-096723.
2] Sitting not linked to incident diabetes: new research [press release]. Sydney, Australia: University of Sydney; February 6, 2017. http://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2017/02/06/sitting-not-linked-to-incident-diabetes.html