Are you spending most of the time at work or at home sitting? If yes, you must be very careful. This is because too much sitting can accelerate aging and dementia in people.
Too Much Sitting Accelerates Aging And Dementia:
There have been studies that found that excessive sitting can result in increased risk of heart disease, certain types of cancers, pain and injury and also early mortality. There have been some recent studies that too much sitting is also linked with an accelerated aging as well as dementia.
Study : Does Too Much Sitting Accelerates Aging?
This study aimed at examining associations between leukocyte telomere length or LTL, i.e. considered as a strong indicator of aging, and the sedentary time. This study was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, in 2017 and it included 1,481 white and African-American women, of average age 79. Individuals with shorter LTL, tend to have a shorter life span and are deemed physiologically “Older” than the individuals with longer LTL. As per the results, women with the lowest activity levels were most likely to be white, older and obese.
The least active women or those who spent more time sitting had shorter LTL than women who were more active. It was found by the researchers that the most sedentary women were biologically 8 years older than their chronological age. So, it is good to avoid too much of sitting that can accelerate aging.
Study That Looked Into Whether Too Much Sitting Accelerates Dementia:
On another study, that was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, in 2017, the researchers looked at dementia risk in sedentary people with and without a genetic predisposition for the disease. More than 1600 older adults were tracked for 5 years, by the researchers and it was found that while carriers of Apolipoprotein E or APOE genotype, a marker of dementia risk, had a higher likelihood of developing dementia than the non-carriers, inactivity played significant role in increasing the risk for those without the gene.
Now, an estimated 44.4 million people have dementia worldwide and this number is expected to reach 75.6 million in 2030. The prefrontal cortex is involved in a lot of higher level of cognitive functions and the hippocampus is known to play a crucial role in memory function. And when it shrinks, it results in Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Exercise can delay the inevitable brain’s decline and slow the onset of dementia. Studies on men and women in the age group of 60 to 80 years, it was found that by taking a short walk three times in a week increased the size of the brain regions that are associated with planning and memory over a course of a year.
Conclusion: So, from the above mentioned studies, we are now clear that too much sitting or a sedentary lifestyle can accelerate aging and dementia. If you are spending most of your time sitting, then try to do some exercises and also try avoiding sitting whenever possible.
