Women who spend their leisure hours chilling out in a chair face a massively increased risk of developing pulmonary embolism <! -dangerous blood clots in the lungs>, researchers warned today.
The findings come from a study of nurses – raising questions about how an active working life and sedentary leisure time combine.
Researchers concluded that those who spent more than 41 hours of their time outside of work sitting faced a doubled risk of getting clots compared with those who spent very little time in chairs – less than ten hours a week.
Nearly 70,000 nurses in the USA were involved in the research, which covered an 18 year period.
Researcher Dr Christopher Kabrhel, of the Massachusetts General Hospital, said the findings showed "physical inactivity" was a major cause of the problem.
Writing in the same journal, Dr James Douketis, of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, said the work "reinforces the notion that prolonged inactivity increases the risk of venous thromboembolism, and it shows how this occurs in everyday life."
* Another study today says that general "satisfaction" with life helps to reduce heart disease risk.
The latest findings of long-term research on 8,000 British civil servants are published in the European Heart Journal. Researchers found the most contented people enjoyed a 13 per cent reduction in heart disease.
British Medical Journal July 5 2011
Boehm JK, Peterson C, Kivimaki M, Kubzansky LD. Heart health when life is satisfying: evidence from the Whitehall II cohort study. Eur Heart J 2011; doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehr203
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