For a Disease-Free Life: Move More! Sit Less!

Staying active isn’t just good for your body—it’s a powerful shield for your brain and overall health! The results of a preliminary study, which will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 77th Annual Meeting in San Diego and online, show that regular physical activity can lower the risk of dementia, stroke, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders. The more you move, the stronger your defense against these diseases. On the other hand, too much sitting can increase your risk by up to 54%! So, get up, get moving, and take charge of your health—because every step counts toward a healthier, sharper, and longer life!

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Too Much Sitting is Not Good for Your Health

The study also found that the more time people spent sitting, the more likely they were to develop one of these diseases.

“This research highlights the role of physical activity and sedentary behavior as modifiable factors that may enhance brain health and reduce the incidence of these diseases,” said study author Jia-Yi Wu, MD, of Fudan University in Shanghai, China. “It is promising to think that encouraging people to make these lifestyle changes could potentially lessen the burden of these diseases in the future.”

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Active Living vs. Sedentary Life: Choose Wisely

From a large United Kingdom database, researchers looked at data from 73,411 people with an average age of 56 who wore accelerometer devices continuously for seven days to measure their physical activity, how much energy they used on their activities and how much time they spent sitting each day.

Metabolic equivalents (METs) were used to quantify energy expenditure. Moderate to vigorous physical activity was defined as activities with an energy expenditure of at least three METs, where walking or cleaning was three METs and more intense exercise like cycling could be around six METs, depending on speed. People who had moderate to vigorous physical activity energy expenditure were 14% to 40% less likely to develop the five diseases than those who had lower energy expenditure, depending on how active they were.

The people who did not develop any of the diseases had an average daily moderate to vigorous physical activity energy expenditure of 1.22 kilojoules per kilogram, compared to 0.85 for the people who developed dementia, 0.95 for those who developed sleep disorders, 1.02 for stroke, 1.08 for depression and 1.10 for anxiety.

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Move More, Sit Less: A Key to Preventing Disease

The more time people spent sitting, the higher their risk of developing one of the diseases, with the increase ranging from 5% to 54% higher than those who spent the least amount of time sitting.

“Some previous studies have relied on people reporting on their own levels of activity,” Wu said. “With our large number of participants and the use of devices that provide objective measurements of activity levels, these results will have implications for assessing risk factors and developing interventions to prevent the development of these diseases.”

A limitation of the study was that 96% of the participants were white people, so the results may not apply to other groups.

Source-Eurekalert