Women who work in or live in senior living communities take note: Sitting around may increase heart-disease risk.
In new findings unlikely to surprise anyone, investigators found that longer sitting times were tied to a higher risk for heart disease, especially for overweight and post-menopausal women, according to findings published Monday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
It turns out such women tend to have higher insulin resistance and blood sugar levels. Insulin resistance is a strong risk factor for both cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
“The findings of this study build upon earlier research including our own, which showed, among older women, that too much time in sedentary behaviors was associated with higher risk for diabetes and heart disease,” Dorothy D. Sears, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition at Arizona State University, said in a statement.
For the investigation, Sears and colleagues enrolled 518 Hispanic and non-Hispanic women, who, on average, were 63 years of age and had a body mass index of 31 kg/m2. A BMI greater than 30 is considered the minimum threshold for obesity.
Among the key discoveries:
- Each additional hour of sitting time per day was linked with a more than 6% higher fasting insulin and a more than 7% increase in insulin resistance; and
- Each additional 15 minutes in average sitting period was associated with a greater than 7% higher fasting insulin and an almost 9% increase in insulin resistance.
“We were surprised to observe such a strong negative link between the amount of time spent sitting and insulin resistance, and that this association was still strong after we accounted for exercise and obesity,” Sears added.
