Whether you work in the garden, take a walk through the woods with the dog or hit the gym three times a week, it doesn’t matter, as long as you get out of that lazy chair. New American research shows that for people over 60, the risk of dementia increases significantly if they sit for more than 10 hours a day.
The Netherlands is the sitting champion of Europe. Dutch people between the ages of 18 and 64 sit for an average of 9.7 hours per day. People over 65 spend 8.5 hours a day. A large proportion therefore also work longer than those 10 hours a day, which puts them at increased risk of dementia. It is remarkable that it does not matter whether you sit for 10 hours in a row or whether you often do something else in between, but the total exceeds those 10 hours.
Total sitting time
“Most people know the advice to get up or walk every half hour between sitting, for example. We wanted to know whether these types of patterns are associated with the risk of dementia,” explains lead researcher Professor David Raichlen of the University of Southern California. “So we were very surprised that it did not matter how long a period of sitting lasted for the risk of dementia, but that it was about the total time that you sit,” Raichlen told Scientias.nl.
People over 60 on the move
The researchers included the UK Biobank, which contains biomedical data from more than half a million Britons. More than 100,000 participants wore an accelerometer that measured their movement 24 hours a day for a week. A group of 50,000 people who were over 60 and did not have dementia were particularly interesting. These were followed for six years, after which 414 were found to have dementia.
But was that because of sitting? To find out, the researchers first had to correct for demographic data, such as age, gender, education level, ethnicity, chronic diseases and genetic differences. And of course for lifestyle factors such as physical activity, diet, smoking, alcohol consumption and self-reported psychological health.
50 percent more chance
And yes, after an extensive test it turned out that a lot of sitting could be linked to a higher risk of dementia. “The group that sat for more than 10 hours a day was 50 percent more likely to develop dementia,” Raichlen said. But for those who did not exceed those 10 hours of sitting, there was hardly a problem. “We were surprised that the risk of dementia increased rapidly after sitting for 10 hours a day, but that there was no increased risk when people stuck to 10 hours a day,” says psychology professor Gene Alexander of the University of Arizona.
Reassured office tigers
“This can be reassuring for people with office jobs who sit for long periods of time. So as long as they limit the total time they spend sitting, the risk of dementia is not too bad,” Raichlen responds. However, he emphasizes that more research is needed to demonstrate that sitting a lot is indeed the cause of the increased risk of dementia and whether physical activity can limit the risks.
It is not entirely clear how sitting increases the risk of dementia. “It may be that sitting a lot is linked to changes in blood flow to the brain or that there is a link with cardiovascular disease. It may also be that there is an unknown external variable that we see through the total sitting time,” Raichlen thinks.
Sit less
What can we best do to reduce the risk of dementia? “The most important conclusion is that the risk is smallest when we sit less. We don’t yet know what type of exercise is best, but sitting less and replacing it with an activity that is more active is important,” he concludes.
2023-09-17 09:02:04
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