Is sitting the new smoking?

Last March 4, the Graduate Program in Epidemiology at UFPel invited Professor Ulf Ekelund, from the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences and the School of Clinical Medicine of the University Cambridge, to deliver the commencement lecture entitled “Is sitting the new smoking?”

With more than 200 original scientific publications, including articles in The Lancet, JAMA, PLOS Medicine and Nature Genetics, the researcher is mainly interested in the role of physical activity and sedentary behavior in the prevention of non-communicable diseases, especially obesity and metabolic diseases, the study of the biological basis of physical activity and sedentary behavior (with special attention to young people), and the measurement of population levels of physical activity.

More recently, the work published by Ekelund in The Lancet (July 2016) drew international media attention by presenting evidence that the increased risk of death associated with eight-hour sitting per day is completely eliminated in people practicing at least one hour of daily physical exercise.