Sitting down all day 'may accelerate DNA ageing'

Conclusion It's not news to anyone that being more physically active and spending less time sitting around is likely to keep people in better health. But this study has many limitations that make it difficult for us to rely on its results. While they are used as a marker for ageing cells, telomeres are not a direct measure of ageing. Although shortened telomeres have been linked to certain diseases, everyone's telomeres shorten over time. Saying shorter telomeres make someone "biologically older" doesn't mean much. This hasn't stopped the emergence of private companies offering to measure your telomeres – but it's unclear what exactly you could usefully do with that information.  And the only cells studied in this research were blood cells, so we don't know whether the results would have held for brain cells, muscle cells or any other cells in the body. Doctors have tried to disentangle the effects of physical activity from the effects of being sedentary before without much success. Generally, as in this study, research seems to show that if you get plenty of moderate to vigorous physical exercise, the amount of time you spend sitting or lying down doesn't make much difference. The researchers carried out a lot of comparisons and used multiple models to try to show sedentary time was linked to telomere length. In most of these models, once you take account of women's age, ethnicity, body mass index and long-term illnesses, there was no link. Only when th...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Genetics/stem cells Source Type: news