Sitting for too long can age women by up to eight years, according to researchers in California.
They found that those who did little exercise and spent ten hours of the day in a chair had cells that were biologically much older: they had shorter telomeres, the tiny caps found on the ends of strands of DNA that have been likened to the plastic tips on shoelaces. They protect chromosomes from deterioration and progressively shorten with age, increasing the risk of disease.
Aladdin Shadyab, of the University of California, San Diego, said: “Our study found cells age faster with a sedentary lifestyle. Chronological age doesn’t always match biological age.”
The findings, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology are based on a study of almost 1,500 women aged 64 to 95. All were from the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-running study investigating the causes of chronic diseases in post-menopausal women.
Dr Shadyab’s team found that women who managed less than 40 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity a day, and who remained sedentary for more than ten hours, had shorter telomeres — which is associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancers.
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Sitting for too long has been described elsewhere as being almost as harmful as smoking, contributing to conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, muscular and back issues, deep vein thrombosis, brittle bones, depression and dementia.