- Posted July 6, 2026
Taking Small Breaks From Sitting Around Can Lower Your Cancer Risk
Planning an epic TV binge, or a long session of video gaming?
If you take hourly breaks to get up and stretch your legs, you’ll lower the risk of cancer posed by sedentary behavior, a new study says.
Each hour of prolonged, uninterrupted sitting around in a person’s day is associated with a 9% higher risk of dying from cancer, researchers reported July 2 in the journal PLOS Medicine.
“Our findings suggest that the health effects of sedentary behavior may depend not only on total sedentary time, but also on whether that time is accumulated in prolonged bouts or interrupted by activity,” concluded the research team led by Frederick Ho, a senior lecturer in public health at the University of Glasgow in the U.K.
For the new study, researchers analyzed data from more than 91,000 participants in U.K. Biobank, a large-scale health research effort in the United Kingdom. All the participants wore activity monitors for a week to track their daily movement, and then were followed for about 12 years.
Results showed that sitting around for long stretches without getting up increased people’s risk of developing or dying from cancer, particularly cancers related to obesity or type 2 diabetes.
However, breaking up sedentary behavior with even a little bit of movement reduced cancer risk.
Replacing one hour a day of prolonged sedentary behavior with light physical activity lowered the risk of cancer death by 12%, researchers found.
“This pattern is biologically plausible: experimental studies have shown that interrupting prolonged sitting with short bouts of activity can improve metabolic responses compared with uninterrupted sitting,” researchers wrote.
“Current health guidelines focus heavily on moderate or vigorous exercise, but our findings show that light movement shouldn't be ignored,” the team wrote. “Moving forward, clinical trials will help us move beyond blanket advice and develop personalized strategies for breaking up sitting time.”
More information
The National Cancer Institute has more on physical activity and cancer.
SOURCE: PLOS, news release, July 2, 2026
