LONDON — A new study is challenging the widely regarded advice that sitting for hours on end at desk jobs or TV binge watching will lead to your untimely demise.

Researchers at the University of Exeter and University College London looked at data from 5,000 participants over 16 years, and found that prolonged periods of sitting doesn’t increase the risk of an early death if you are otherwise physically active.

This flies in the face of advice issued by the National Health Service (NHS), which says adults should get up and move around every 30 minutes. It says that people who sit the longest have an increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular ailments and premature death.

This advice was based on a far larger study with almost 800,000 participants.

There’s plenty of other research out there that spells doom for desk dwellers, too.

“Excessive sitting is a lethal activity,” James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota told The New York Times in 2011.

So what to believe? In this latest study, the researchers had civil servants in London record how much time they spent sitting at work, during leisure time and watching TV over a period of 16 years.

There were 3,720 men and 1,412 women involved in the research. Age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, general health, smoking, alcohol consumption and diet were taken into account, as well as the amount of walking and exercise.

They found that this group of people, being civil servants using London’s public transportation, spent almost twice the amount of time walking each day than the rest of the UK population. This may have had a beneficial effect on them.

“Our findings suggest that reducing sitting time might not be quite as important for mortality risk as previously publicised and that encouraging people to be more active should still be a public health priority,” said lead author Richard Pulsford, a researcher in the sport and health sciences department at the University of Exeter.

The study says more research is needed into the incidence of developing diseases like diabetes from sitting, and also whether it’s the physical posture of sitting or just the lack of motion that is harmful.

In any case, maybe it’s a good idea to hedge your bets and go take a walk.

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