The sedentary lifestyle of Canadians generates annual costs of at least $2.2 billion, reveals a new study which claims to be the first to make this calculation.
This figure would represent 1.6% of the economic burden of illness in Canada. This includes direct costs, such as those charged to the health care system, and indirect costs, such as productivity lost to health problems.
The two most expensive chronic diseases attributable to excessive sedentary behavior were cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
“We like our chair, the modern environment makes us like to stay seated, but there are risks for our physical health and our mental health, said the author of the study, Professor Jean- Philippe Chaput from the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Ottawa.
“The purpose of this study is to quantify all of this so that, in the future, politicians may listen a little more and then invest in finding solutions. »
Sedentary time is defined as a period of eight hours spent sitting, lying down or lying down, even if the individual does two hours of CrossFit in the evening. (In comparison, an individual is considered “physically inactive” if they do not get at least 150 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity each week.)
The prevalence of excessive sedentary behavior among Canadians was measured using an accelerometer worn at the waist by a nationally representative sample of adults, the Canadian Health Measures Survey 2018-2019.
The bill for cardiovascular diseases attributable to a sedentary lifestyle amounts to $747.9 million per year, or 34% of the total. That of type 2 diabetes amounts to $609.4 million, which represents 27.8% of the total. Depression comes third, with $322.3 million and 14.7%.
“We do not claim to have the true figure, but it is to demonstrate that there are significant costs,” said Professor Chaput.
This study mainly looked at direct costs, he added, and studies elsewhere in the world have shown that indirect costs can be even higher.
The study shows that the cost of a sedentary lifestyle is comparable to the cost of obesity, and obesity is described “as a very, very serious scourge,” emphasized Professor Chaput.
It is estimated that approximately 88% of Canadians are sedentary. If we reduced this percentage by ten points, to 78%, we could achieve annual savings of approximately $219 million, according to the authors of the study published by the Canadian Journal of Public Health.
However, sedentary lifestyles are not new to the attention of public health specialists and the search for the most effective strategies to combat it.
“I think it’s going to be difficult to reduce our sedentary time because there are a lot of forces against us that make it easier to sit still. And people like it too,” said Professor Chaput.
An interesting solution, he believes, involves education and awareness-raising at school level to give young people the chance to acquire healthy lifestyle habits very early on, which is simpler than convincing adults to change their way of life.