Research
Adherence
There is no significant association between sedentary behavior and cancer mortality.
Current evidence does not show a clear link between how much you sit and your risk of dying from cancer, unlike heart disease or diabetes.
GoodRefutesMEDIUM confidence
The association was... non-significant with cancer mortality.
Why this rating
Meta-analysis of prospective studies, but the association was non-significant.
Source
Sedentary behaviour and risk of all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality, and incident type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and dose response meta-analysis
Richard Patterson et al. · European Journal of Epidemiology · 2018
DOI 10.1007/s10654-018-0380-1
Meta-analysis · 34 studiesCited 1,415×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- High levels of sedentary behavior (total sitting or TV viewing) are independently associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, and incident type 2 diabetes, even after adjusting for physical activity levels.Strong
- Television viewing time has a stronger association with mortality and type 2 diabetes risk than total sedentary time, with specific thresholds identified for increased risk.Strong
Related findings · Adherence
- Regular physical activity (at least 150 minutes/week of moderate-intensity) reduces all-cause and cardiovascular mortality by 20-30% and lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes by 25-35%.Strong
- Increasing physical activity from a sedentary lifestyle to an active one in middle adulthood significantly reduces the risk of coronary events compared to remaining sedentary.Strong
- Resistance exercise is the only intervention capable of consistently restoring muscle function and strength in sarcopenia, partially overcoming age-related anabolic resistance.Strong
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