Even if you exercise daily and eat healthy sitting is a risk factor for developing kidney disease.

A recent study in July 2018, by the American Cancer Society, showed if you sit for six hours a day or more, your risk of dying early jumps almost 20%. Compared to people who sit fewer than three hours a day.

The study authors created a 14 point list of the major ways people die from sitting for too long. Kidney disease is listed as one the ways people died earlier than they should.

The other ways sitting can kill you are: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, COPD which is short for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, musculoskeletal problems, Parkinson’s disease, peptic ulcers, stroke, lung disease, Alzheimer’s and other disorders.

Lead researcher Alpa Patel said, “The message is we should move more.” Ms. Patel was a director of the American Cancer Study presented here.

128,000 women and men were part of the study. The study was for 21 years. Just over 2 decades and everyone at the start of the study was free of major diseases, including kidney disease. During the course of the study 49,000 people had died.

David Katz MD from Yale Prevention Research Center in Conn., said:

• Sitting for long periods of time is bad for your health. This has also been shown in many other studies.

• This study and others show excessive sitting to an increased risk of dying early from a variety of causes. Everything from heart disease to suicide.

• Even Suicide has been linked to excessive sitting. This is possibly because depressed people aren’t motivated to get up, but we also know activity is important to mental health.

At this point we know a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for a variety of diseases. If you are at risk of kidney disease or just want to prevent it.

The remedy is simple:

• Stand, stretch, and walk around for 1 minute for every hour of sitting.

You don’t want kidney disease to progress if you have it, and you surely don’t want to develop it. If you have an office job you want to make sure to get up every hour and walk for 1 minute.

Don’t be a couch potato! Or at least get up for every hour of watching TV to walk, stretch and grab a drink of water.

This is probably one of the easiest recommendations for helping your kidney problems and any other issues you may have.

 

 

 

 

The study was published in June 2018 in the American Journal of Epidemiology