Study: Stand-up to Live Longer
For all those wishing for a longer life, leaving that couch and standing-up is the mantra, claims a latest study.
Cutting on the time spent on TV watching each day, and standing up and walking around more even at work can add up to people's life span.
For the study, data from U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for 2005-06 and 2009-10 to was studied to determine the amount of time that American adults spend watching TV and sitting down each day.
The data was combined with findings of people sitting down for long hours and deaths from all causes.
The research could associate long hours of sitting down and early deaths. The researchers concluded that if a person can cut down on the TV watching time to less than three hours, chances are that they will increase their life expectancy by 2 years. Also, restricting TV viewing time to less than two hours per day could extend life expectancy by about 1.4 years, reported Health Day.
"The results of this study indicate that extended sitting time and TV viewing may have the potential to reduce life expectancy in the U.S.A.," the researchers wrote in a news release from the journal.
According to the NHANES data, on an average, adults in U.S. spend 55 percent of the say being inactive physically, which implies that a major drive to change behavior population-wide is needed to see improvements in life expectancy, the researchers noted.
The findings were published online July 9 in the journal BMJ Open.
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