levels of physical activity and sedentary behaviour

Burying your head about getting back to the gym? Here’s your licence to get moving! We Brits are getting lazier, it’s a fact… A study has found that our levels of sedentary behaviour have worsened more rapidly than in any other major western European country. And smartphones are being blamed. Here are the shocking stats on just how long we’re stuck to our seats every day… plus a special offer for The Daily Dose subscribers to help them get off their bums and get more active!

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A study published in the journal BMC Public Health has concluded that sedentary behaviour among adults in this country rose by 22% from 2002 to 2017. Apparently inactivity rates among people aged 35 to 44 are driving this development, plus the tendency for more of us to be sedentary and on our phones during our leisure time. Defined as spending 4.5 hours or more sitting down, sedentary behaviour increased here by 25.2% among men and 16.5% among women. Last year a survey of smartphone owners in the UK found that on average we spend three hours and 25 minutes on our phones each day.

Lack of exercise is of course a large contributor to life-threatening diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and cancer. Research in 2016 estimated that 230,000 deaths in Europe can be attributed every year to sitting times – that’s just over 4% of the total number of deaths. In Britain the figure is around 70,000 per year.

In terms of other countries surveyed, France is the next laziest nation – its levels of sedentary behaviour rose by 17.8%. And they are followed by Germany, which experienced a 7.4% rise, and 3.9% for Spain.

The authors concluded that governments would have more success in battling unhealthy lifestyles if they stressed the dangers of spending too much time sitting down rather than encouraging people to go to the gym

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