Occupational sitting tied to increased likelihood of obesity in women

Washington: A new study has revealed that occupational sitting is tied to increased likelihood of obesity in women, especially among black women.

Lead author Lin Yang said that the objective of this study from the School of Medicine and the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis was to quantify the association between self-reported occupational sitting time and BMI by gender and race, independent of time spent in physical activity outside of work.

Yang added that to the best of their knowledge, this is the first study to examine differences in the association between occupational sitting and weight status among African American women and white women.

The researchers examined the association between occupational sitting and BMI between men and women and between black and white women and found that average daily time spent by both men and women in occupational sitting was between three and six hours. Most participants in the study were overweight or obese.

The researchers wrote in the study that after adjusting for potential confounders, they found that African-American women in three categories of sitting time (31-180 minutes, 181-360 minutes, and more than 360 minutes) were approximately and consistently 2.5 times as likely to be obese as African-American women who reported sitting for 30 minutes or less, independent of occupational and leisure-time physical activity.

This association was not seen among white women and no significant associations were found among men.

The researchers wrote that the lack of association between occupational sitting and weight status among men might be explained by the differences between men and women in physical activity preferences and men are more active in leisure-time physical activity than women and women tend to do less vigorous and more moderate activity compared with men.