Sitting all day increases dementia risk — even if you exercise

[Fc1345linville]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness ... -dementia/

Interesting article, and not good news if you have a sit-down desk job. I get help from my Apple watch which vibrates if I have been sitting an hour straight, telling me to get off my butt. And most of the time I do stand/walk for a while.

Fc

[Tincup]

Interesting article, and not good news if you have a sit-down desk job. I get help from my Apple watch which vibrates if I have been sitting an hour straight, telling me to get off my butt. And most of the time I do stand/walk for a while.

Here is one antidote, "Exercise Snacks.' One of the authors of the linked paper, researcher Martin Gibala PhD, has a consumer book, The One Minute Workout, as well as a recent podcast with Rhonda Patrick.

I'm guessing the people in the study referenced by the WP article were not doing HIT to break up their sitting.

From the article:
"What about standing desks or walk breaks?
The same was true for walking and other short breaks. After adjusting for other factors, the researchers noted few improvements among people who interrupted their sitting time with breaks. If they got up and walked around, but still managed to sit for 10 or more hours a day, their risk didn’t change much. What ultimately mattered was how many hours, in total, a person spent in a chair most days."

Per my own activity tracker, I'm almost always under 10 hours and generally in the 8 or 9 hour range.

Here is the actual paper.

From the paper:

"Relative to a median of 9.27 hours/d for sedentary behavior, the hazard ratios (HRs) for dementia were 1.08 (95% CI, 1.04-1.12, P < .001) for 10 hours/d, 1.63 (95% CI, 1.35-1.97, P < .001) for 12 hours/d, and 3.21 (95% CI, 2.05-5.04, P < .001) for 15 hours/d. The adjusted incidence rate of dementia per 1000 person-years was 7.49 (95% CI, 7.48-7.49) for 9.27 hours/d of sedentary behavior, 8.06 (95% CI, 7.76-8.36) for 10 hours/d, 12.00 (95% CI, 10.00-14.36) for 12 hours/d, and 22.74 (95% CI, 14.92-34.11) for 15 hours/d. Mean daily sedentary bout length (HR, 1.53 [95% CI, 1.03-2.27], P = .04 and 0.65 [95% CI, 0.04-1.57] more dementia cases per 1000 person-years for a 1-hour increase from the mean of 0.48 hours) and maximum daily sedentary bout length (HR, 1.15 [95% CI, 1.02-1.31], P = .02 and 0.19 [95% CI, 0.02-0.38] more dementia cases per 1000 person-years for a 1-hour increase from the mean of 1.95 hours) were significantly associated with higher risk of incident dementia. The number of sedentary bouts per day was not associated with higher risk of incident dementia (HR, 1.00 [95% CI, 0.99-1.01], P = .89). In the sensitivity analyses, after adjustment for time spent in sedentary behavior, the mean daily sedentary bout length and the maximum daily sedentary bout length were no longer significantly associated with incident dementia."

"The number of sedentary bouts per day was not associated with higher risk of incident dementia (HR, 1.00 [95% CI, 0.99-1.01], P = .89). " This is not significant with a P value of 0.89.

[Fc1345linville]

Thanks Tincup, I will definitely give this a try!

Fc

[veewren]

What I want to know is... they say standing desks don't really help, but what if I stand at the standing desk most of my working day instead of sitting? That's the same (or close to the same) risk as sitting, it seems? My watch can measure "stand minutes," but it doesn't seem to count time spent standing at the standing desk.