A 2023 study published in JAMA used data from roughly 50,000 UK adults aged 60+ who wore activity trackers to minutely record their movement (and lack thereof) throughout the day. They then used AI to interpret the results and tracked people’s medical status over the next seven years. They found a very strong correlation between long hours of sitting and dementia: Those who sat at least ten hours a day had an 8% higher risk of getting dementia in those seven years, while those who spent 12 hours sitting had a jaw-dropping 63% higher risk. A surprising finding was that exercising regularly, or walking and taking breaks, did not help: if people still sat more than ten hours a day the dementia risks remained the same. It’s the total hours of sitting that drives the risk.
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