Dementia risk rises 'rapidly' with one common daily habit, new study finds

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Sitting for more than 10 hours a day could raise the risk of dementia, according to a new study.The neurological condition has been linked to those who live a sedentary lifestyle - one that sees a person sit or lie down for at least six hours a day.

A lack of physical activity is known to affect weight and heart health, but new research indicates it may also negatively impact brain health.The study published on Tuesday in Jama also revealed the way sedentary behaviour accumulated over the course of the day didn’t matter as much as the total time spent sitting still daily.Dementia is an incurable disease which poses a range of debilitating symptoms including memory loss, poor judgement and deteriorating muscle function.

As such, making small changes now may be the best way to prevent the onset of the condition which affects more than 900,000 people in the UK, according to the NHS."Many of us are familiar with the common advice to break up long periods of sitting by getting up every 30 minutes or so to stand or walk around," said study author Professor David Raichlen. "We wanted to see if those types of patterns are associated with dementia risk.

We found that once you take into account the total time spent sedentary, the length of individual sedentary periods didn’t really matter."Researchers at the University of Southern California and University of Arizona examined movement of over 100,000 adults over 60 years old in a six year period to come to their conclusion.