Physical activity could help you avoid an early death if you sit for most of the day
But researchers say exercise doesn't go as far in countering the effects of watching TV
One hour of brisk physical activity a day "eliminates" the increased risk of death associated with life spent mostly sitting - be it at your desk or in your car - according to new medical research. But it won't do much good to completely eliminate the risks associated with long periods of sitting in front of the TV.
According to a report published in The Lancet medical journal, researchers examining the link between "sedentary behavior" and all-cause mortality found that while at least an hour of exercise a day can "eliminate" the health risks associated with spending most of your day sitting, it was not so effective at getting rid of the risks associated with binge-watching.
The team of researchers was led by Professor Ulf Ekelund from the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences and the University of Cambridge and looked at 16 previous studies that had data on the daily sitting time, TV-viewing time and physical activity of over one million men and women.
They analysed the various data for any associations between daily sitting time and physical activity with all-cause mortality, grouping respondents in terms of how active they were, before repeating their analysis using TV-viewing time instead of daily sitting time.
They then looked at mortality rates in follow-up data to see whether physical activity does reduce or eliminate the detrimental health effects of prolonged sitting as many public health bodies believe.