The known health impacts of a sedentary lifestyle

Discover the impacts that a sedentary lifestyle and sedentary work can have on health.

While we spend more time sitting both at home and at work, we need to understand the impacts that a sedentary lifestyles has on health.

Health outcomes of sedentary lifestyles

A number of health outcomes have been identified and these include:

• increased risk of Type 2 Diabetes
• increased risk of developing cancers including colorectal, endometrial, ovarian and prostate cancer
• increased risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease
• increased risk of becoming overweight and obesity
• significantly increased risk of early death
• impacts on bone density.

Improving outcomes with physical activity

While individuals may have a sedentary work role, research has shown that for people taking part in moderate to intense physical activity 60-75 minutes per week is enough to reduce the health impacts.

However, for those that have limited physical activity outside of work, the impacts were not reduced. For those with limited physical activity, actually doing light activities reduced the risk of dying, while 30 minutes of light physical activity reduced cancer deaths.