Australians who spent a lot of time sitting at a desk or in front of a TV were more likely to die of any cause during a three-year period than those who were only sedentary a few hours a day, according to a study.
Researchers found the link between too much time sitting and shortened lives stuck when they accounted for how much moderate or vigorous exercise people got, as well as their weight and other measures of health.
That suggests shifting some time from sitting to light physical activity might have important long-term benefits, researchers said.
“When we give people messages about how much physical activity they should be doing, we also need to talk to them about reducing the amount of hours they spend sitting each day,” said Hidde van der Ploeg, the study’s lead author from the University of Sydney.
Of more than 200,000 adults 45 and older, van der Ploeg and her colleagues found that people who reported sitting for at least 11 hours a day were 40 percent more likely to die during the study than those who sat less than four hours daily.
That doesn’t prove sitting, itself, cuts people’s lives short, she pointed out.
A little chocolate every week aids weight, researchers say
People who ate chocolate a few times a week or more weighed less than those who rarely indulged, according to a U.S. study involving 1,000 people.
Researchers said the findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, don’t prove that adding a candy bar to your daily diet will help you shed pounds. Nor did the total amount of chocolate consumed have an impact.
But the researchers, led by Beatrice Golomb from the University of California at San Diego, said it was possible that antioxidants in chocolate could be behind health benefits, including lower blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as decreased body weight.
“People have just assumed that because it comes with calories and it’s typically eaten as a sweet … it would inherently have been one way: bad,” Golomb said.
She and her colleagues used data from a study on cholesterol-lowering drugs that surveyed 1,000 healthy adults on typical eating habits.
The participants, who ranged from 20 to 85 years old, ate chocolate an average of twice per week and had an average body mass index, or BMI, of 28, which is considered overweight but not obese.
The researchers found that people who ate chocolate with greater frequency tended to eat more calories overall, including more saturated fat, than those who went light on the candy. But even so, chocolate lovers tended to have a lower body weight.
Kidney stones and calcium
Older women whose diet includes too little calcium or water — or too much salt — have an increased risk of developing kidney stones, a study finds.
Researchers found that among more than 78,000 U.S. women in their 50s and 70s, the risk of developing first-time kidney stones declined as calcium or fluid intake climbed. On the other hand, the odds went up with a higher sodium intake.
Kidney stones develop when the urine contains more crystal-forming substances — like calcium, uric acid and a compound called oxalate — than can be diluted.
People prone to developing kidney stones have long been told to boost their fluid intake; that helps dilute the substances that can lead to stones. Cutting down on salt can help because too much sodium boosts calcium levels in the urine.
Since most kidney stones contain calcium, it was once thought that cutting down on calcium could help.
