Relation Between Occupational Sitting Duration and Central Obesity? A Study in Bengalee Female Human Resources Engaged in Sedentary Occupation

In recent times, drastic socio-demographic changes have led to significant reduction in the energy required to perform the tasks of everyday life resulting in increased ‘sedentarism’—both at home and at workplace. In this context, public health initiatives have focused mainly on the association between increasing physical activity and reduction of the chance of occurrence of many non-communicable diseases like obesity and related co-morbidities, but this approach alone has not yielded effective results in all situations. As adults spend about one-third or more time daily at workplace, a study, in this backdrop, has been undertaken to assess the relationship, if any, between duration of occupational sitting, one of the most common sedentary behaviors at workplace, and central obesity status, assessed in terms of select novel indicators like sagittal abdominal diameter, index of central obesity, waist–hip–height ratio, body mass abdominal index and abdominal volume index, in Bengalee female human resources engaged in sedentary occupation. It has been found that individuals with an increased occupational sitting duration have significantly poor central obesity status assessed in terms of the stated indicators compared to individuals of similar age, sex, socioeconomic and occupational background having decreased occupational sitting duration. From the present study, it may be concluded that occupational sitting duration has a deleterious influence on central obesity status which may lead to increased chance of suffering from chronic non-communicable diseases like CVD and T2D.