Not moving enough may be as hazardous to your health as smoking, a new study shows.

The study, which is published in The Lancet, estimates as many as 5.3 million deaths around the world were caused by physical inactivity in 2008.

By comparison, researchers point out that cigarette smoking is estimated to cause about 5 million deaths worldwide each year.

"Physical inactivity has a large impact on the health of the world. In fact, its impact is comparable to that of cigarette smoking," says researcher I-Min Lee, ScD, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, in a news conference.

Experts who were not involved in the research questioned that claim, however.

Timothy Armstrong, PhD, coordinator of the surveillance and population-based prevention program for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, points out that his organization estimates that inactivity causes fewer deaths -- about 3.2 million deaths around the world each year.

Armstrong says he thinks the Lancet researchers compared numbers that were arrived at in two different ways. "If the same methodology had been applied to smoking, I suspect we would not see the similar estimates for mortality," Armstrong says in an email to WebMD.

"That is not to say that physical activity or physical inactivity is not a major risk factor" for chronic diseases, he says. "It is. WHO currently ranks it fourth after high blood pressure, tobacco use, and high cholesterol."

The study further estimates that 6% of heart disease, 7% of type 2 diabetes, and about 10% of colon and breast cancers, are linked to lack of activity.
Sitting a Lot Can Be 'Very Bad' for You

Experts who study the health effects of physical inactivity praised the study for its broad scope and careful methods.

"This is a super, super analysis," says James Levine, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "We know that as soon as somebody gets out of their chair, their blood sugar improves, their blood cholesterol and triglycerides improve, and that's very consistent. Every time you get up it gets better. Every time you sit down it gets worse."

"If you add up the fact that you sit a lot, many, many hours each day, the cumulative impact of a lot of sitting is not surprisingly therefore very bad," Levine says.

Other experts agree.

"Inactivity plays a role in almost every chronic disease there is," says John P. Thyfault, PhD, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri's School of Medicine. He studies the health effects of inactivity but was not involved in the research.

"We should maintain cigarette smoking as public health enemy number one, but we should move physical inactivity right up next to it," he says.

Snoring heavily almost doubles the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, a study shows.

Researchers in Taiwan found patients diagnosed with the snoring-related condition sleep apnoea were nearly twice as likely to suffer the joint-damaging disease, Daily Mail reported Thursday.


Scientists believe chronic sleep apnoea can lead to inflammation in blood vessels in the body, which may act as a catalyst for arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis was previously thought to be triggered when something goes wrong with the immune system.

In Britain, three million people suffer from sleep apnoea, though many more may remain undiagnosed.

Maintaining a food diary faithfully and not skipping meals could be one of the safest and surest ways of shedding weight, especially for obese postmenopausal women, a study says.


The study by Anne McTiernan from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, US, and colleagues, is the first to look at the impact of a wide range of self-monitoring and diet-related behaviours and meal patterns on the weight of such women.

"When it comes to weight loss, evidence from randomised, controlled trials comparing different diets finds that restricting total calories is more important than diet composition such as low-fat versus low-carbohydrate," said McTiernan.

"Therefore, the specific aim of our study was to identify behaviours that supported the global goal of calorie reduction," McTiernan added, the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reports.

Women who kept food journals consistently lost about six pounds more than those who did not; while women who reported skipping meals lost almost eight fewer pounds than women who did not, according to a Fred Hutchinson statement.

Women who ate out for lunch at least weekly lost on average five fewer pounds than those who ate out less frequently (eating out often at all meal times was associated with less weight loss, but the strongest association was observed with lunch)

"For individuals who are trying to lose weight, the No. 1 piece of advice based on these study results would be to keep a food journal to help meet daily calorie goals," said McTiernan, director of the Hutchinson Centre`s prevention centre and a member of its Public Health Sciences division.

Some of the tips for keeping a food journal are: Be honest - record everything you eat; be accurate - measure portions, read labels; be complete - include details such as how the food was prepared, and the addition of any toppings or condiments; be consistent - always carry your food diary with you or use a diet-tracking application on your smartphone.

The analysis was based on data from 123 overweight-to-obese, sedentary women, aged 50 to 75 years, who were randomly assigned to two arms of a controlled, randomised year-long dietary weight-loss intervention study.

A top British University is planning to undertake a new research study looking at ethics, policy and practice concerning polio immunisation in India. University of Birmingham is working with Ravenshaw University in the eastern Indian state of Orissa on the new research project, a press release by the University said.

Although India has been removed from the list of polio endemic countries, misconceptions still remain around polio vaccination within the country, the release said.

The two-year project will gather relevant empirical evidence about attitudes to polio vaccination campaigns in Orissa from three key groups - parents, community workers and those involved in planning and implementing the campaign, such as government officials, it said.

While no cases of polio have been officially reported recently in the state, the research team will study more remote tribal areas where facilities are less developed, the release said.

The study will outline and systematically explore the ethical issues that arise in relation to vaccination in general, as well as the issues raised by the empirical material gathered as part of the project, it said.

The project aims to initiate a long-standing collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Ravenshaw in terms of both teaching and research in ethics and history relating to health, it added.

The first of a series of interdisciplinary research workshops will be held in Bhubaneswar in early December to widen the areas of discussion and seek topics for further joint work in the future.

"A lot of people in India do not opt for mass vaccination programmes for a number of reasons. We want to explore these reasons and bring about an attitudinal change", Angus Dawson, Professor of Public Health Ethics from the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham said.

High levels of anxiety might really make you age faster, a new study suggests.

The study found a link between a common form of anxiety called phobic anxiety - an unreasonable fear of certain situations, such as crowds, heights or the outside world - and shorter telomeres in middle-aged and older women. Telomeres are caps on the ends of chromosomes that protect the genetic material from damage.

"Many people wonder about whether - and how - stress can make us age faster," said study researcher Dr. Olivia Okereke, a psychiatrist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "This study is notable for showing a connection between a common form of psychological stress - phobic anxiety - and a plausible mechanism for premature aging," Okereke said.

Telomeres generally shorten as we age, and among people of the same age, shortened telomeres have been linked to an increased risk of cancers, heart disease, dementia and overall risk of death.

However, the researchers emphasized that the study only shows an association, not a cause-effect link, and it's possible that people with shorter telomeres are generally prone to experiencing more stress. Studies that follow people forward over time are needed to confirm the findings.

Okereke and colleagues analyzed information from 5,243 women ages 42 to 69 years, who took part in the Nurses' Health Study. To measure participants' levels of phobic anxiety, researchers looked at their answers to questions such as "Do you have an unreasonable fear of being in enclosed spaces?" and "Do you feel panicky in crowds?"

The researchers found a link between high scores on the questionnaire and shorter telomeres.

The difference in telomere lengths between women who were highly phobic and those who were not was similar to what would be expected between women about six years apart in age.

The findings held even after the researchers accounted for factors that might influence the length of telomeres, such as participants' smoking, body mass indexes, physical activity levels and the age of participants' fathers when their children were born. [See Men Who Delay Fatherhood May Extend Grandkids' Lives ]

The researchers noted they did not take into account whether participants experienced depression, which may have affected the results.