Dementia risk is highest if you sit for longer than 10 hours each day | Hacker News Reader

Dementia risk is highest if you sit for longer than 10 hours each day

dailymail.co.uk

27 pointsLinuxBender17 comments

What's frustrating about this “sitting is the new smoking” thing is that there are no clear guidelines on what will partially or completely counteract it. With smoking it is simple. You don't smoke. But what do you do instead of sit? I skimmed the article for mentions of standing but it is unclear that standing (like at my standing desk) does not count as this dementia-risk (non-)activity. Because standing in front of a screen is pretty sedentary as well.

But everyone bought standing desks anyway. So are we now supposed to wait twenty years for the longtidunal studies that find out that, actually, standing might not make much of a difference? (And it gives you some heel-related tendonitis?)

I could bring my treadmill (for desks) to work if it were not for the whirring.

I guess I have no excuses though since I just have to be in front of a screen for ~eight hours a weekday (less than ten). So I just have to not-sit—and perhaps fidget a little for good measure—in my free time.

I guess it should be more socially acceptable to squat instead of sitting on chairs at social gatherings. Good thing that I'm not invited to those things a lot though, what with the long-term senility risks.

The article is just saying a sedentary lifestyle is not healthy. I easily sit for 10 hours per day, but I also work out 6 days per week. I'm sure I'm fine as long as my circulation is good. Exercise is the silver bullet.

I agree with this. Exercise seems to be a major protective seal against dementia.

> Exercise is the silver bullet.

This is a very 2008 perspective on health. The article doesn't mention exercise at all but the studies I alluded to with “sitting is the new smoking” outright rejected that exercise counteracted all the negative effects of sedentariness. So exercise was deemed to be no less benefitial compared to before, but it didn't make you “catch up” if you also were sedentary for whatever cutoff they had found.

And indeed the very study (or DailyMail rehashing) that we are talking about wouldn't really make sense under the old exercise-only regime since the general public would have no interest in an article that doesn't even mention whether people got any exercise or at least a brisk walk now and then (like making a distinction between someone who only sits for six hours a day and doesn't exercise contra someone who sits for twelve hours a day and jogs for two hours). But the anti-sitting paradigm has penetrated the public consciousness now (notice standing desks and the ilk). Which is why the DailyMail can make tabloid headlines about it.

Seems like the study utilized accelerometer data to identify sedentary-ness, so I would assume actively working at a desk would interrupt sedentary periods more so than being seated on a couch. But I agree, there isn't much to be found in terms of defining the foundations of the study.

> ~eight hours a weekday (less than ten).

You can use those two hours for driving.

"Compared with individuals who had not been exposed to sedentary behavior, individuals who were exposed to sedentary behavior had a 30% higher risk of experiencing dementia. Sedentary behavior was associated with several chronic diseases that were also associated with cognitive impairment and risk of dementia. Previous data suggested that prolonged sedentary time could impair glucose and lipid metabolism, which were recognized as the risk factors for cognitive decline and all-cause dementia. In addition, inflammation was also identified as a potential risk factor for dementia."

- From this meta-analysis: Association between sedentary behavior and the risk of dementia: a systematic review and meta-analysis (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7174309/)

So almost everyone? From desk job to truck driver.

For real. So one can go run for 1h / day, go to a desk job and still have a higher risk? Welp, guess I'll just die...

Most blue collar jobs are not seated.

I think having a desk-based job after the age of 60 in GB correlates to a ton of factors. I can't access the paper but the abstract mentions no control variables.

That on its own could be understandable, but if it's printed in the Daily Mail, then for sure it can't be true...

Correlates to being poor, or at least not being rich.

Link to the study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/28094...

Zen masters spend many hours sitting. I haven't checked, but I suspect that they have lower than the average rate of dementia

They're training the mind. It would be dissapointing if it didn't.

Does the metaverse count though?

Well dang.

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