Spending an excessive amount of time sitting and being inactive may enhance the chance of dementia in older adults, warns a current examine carried out by researchers from USC and the College of Arizona. The examine, revealed in JAMA, discovered that adults aged 60 and above who interact in sedentary behaviors, similar to sitting for prolonged durations whereas watching TV or driving, face a better threat of growing dementia.
What’s particularly regarding is that the chance of dementia considerably rises for individuals who spend over 10 hours a day being sedentary. This discovering is noteworthy as a result of the typical American is sedentary for about 9.5 hours every day.
The examine additionally revealed that it is not nearly how sedentary time accumulates throughout the day; the full quantity of sedentary time issues most. Whether or not you sit for lengthy stretches or take brief breaks all through the day, the chance of dementia is analogous. So, merely breaking apart lengthy durations of sitting with brief walks is probably not sufficient to mitigate this threat.
This examine highlights the significance of lowering sedentary time for higher mind well being as we age. So, it is a good suggestion for adults, particularly these of their senior years, to search out methods to remain lively and keep away from extreme sitting to guard towards the chance of dementia.
The researchers analysed knowledge from the UK Biobank, which concerned over 100,000 adults carrying movement-measuring gadgets for every week. They targeted on roughly 50,000 adults over 60 with out dementia on the examine’s outset.
After round six years of follow-up, the researchers found a transparent hyperlink between excessive ranges of sedentary conduct and dementia threat. Surprisingly, additionally they discovered that there is a threshold—spending greater than 10 hours sedentary every day—that considerably elevates the chance.
The excellent news is that decrease ranges of sedentary conduct, as much as round 10 hours, weren’t related to elevated dementia threat. This means that when you’ve got a job that requires quite a lot of sitting, you may nonetheless cut back your threat by limiting your complete each day sedentary time.
“Many people are aware of the widespread recommendation to interrupt up lengthy durations of sitting by getting up each half-hour or so to face or stroll round. We wished to see if these kinds of patterns are related to dementia threat. We discovered that after you have in mind the full time spent sedentary, the size of particular person sedentary durations didn’t actually matter,” stated examine creator David Raichlen, professor of organic sciences and anthropology on the USC Dornsife School of Letters, Arts and Sciences.