A recent research conducted in the field of public health has provided people with preventive strategies that hold the potential to reduce the causes of harmful mental health disorders like dementia. It was published by Elsevier in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The active mind
Most of the common people spend 8 to 9 hours of their day in a sitting position. Research related to public health has finally released its results. After almost a decade of hard work. The researchers have found that the work a person does while sitting impacts their body. It decides how close they are to developing dementia and various other types of physical and mental health disorders.
While sitting for long hours has always been viewed by doctors as a risk to a person’s health. The research by Elsevier has found a critical distinction between the types of sitting. The researchers state that mentally inactive sitting, for example, watching TV, scrolling on a smartphone, or simply daydreaming, increases a person’s risk of getting dementia. However, on the other hand, sitting while performing mentally active work, like focusing on your studies, playing chess, or doing your office work, is something that protects a person from disorders like dementia as well as depression.
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Research details
This research was conducted in between the time period of 1997 and 2016. It took the researchers 19 years to complete this study, which was the first to identify the difference between mentally active and inactive sitting in association with mental health disorders. Before this research, it was believed that all activities that require a lot of sitting were raising the risk of people getting affected by the physical as well as mental health-related diseases like cardiovascular diseases, apart from them diabetes, as well as depression, and obviously dementia, for which the research was conducted.
While conducting the research, the researchers collected data from almost 20,811 adult populations. The major focus of this research was on people aged between 35 and 64 years. Various questions were asked of the subjects. This included questions about all the activities that they perform in their daily life. Questions related to their mental well-being were also asked by the researchers. After a deeper and detailed study of these behaviour patterns. The researchers examined the causes that were likely to lead a person closer to dementia.
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Research findings
After following 20,811 people from 3,600 cities and villages for almost a time period of 2 decades. The researchers found that being mentally active and engaging yourself in activities that promote lifelong learning, for example, learning a new language or challenging your brain with puzzles, helps people a lot, especially in old age. The researchers found that staying mentally active reduces a person’s risk of getting affected by mental health diseases like depression and dementia.
The more time a person spends keeping themselves mentally active. The more it significantly improves their chances of getting a healthier state of cognitive health, even in their old age. During the research, the researchers found that sitting for longer hours is not a major cause of mental health conditions like dementia. Sitting passively and without an active state of mind is something that causes people harm. If people replace the amount of time that they are spending scrolling their mobile phones or watching television with something more useful and effort-requiring mental activity. They will significantly improve their chances of developing dementia and other problems that are related to mental health.
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Author’s perspective
The lead investigator of this research, Mats Hallgren, PhD, from the department of public health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, along with Barker Dakin from the department of lifestyle and diabetes, Institute of Physical Activity and Nutrition, utrition Deakin University, states that‘’ while all types of sitting involve a minimal use of energy. It may make a difference in the level of brain activity. The way in which we use our brain while we are in a sitting position is crucial in determining our future cognitive functions and may predict dementia onset.
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Conclusion
This research, conducted by Elsevier, strongly emphasises the importance of staying mentally active in our daily lives. As such activities are not just merely for a person’s entertainment but are highly crucial for keeping them far from physical as well as many different types of mental diseases like dementia, depression and many other problems. Staying mentally active while sitting can save people from cognitive decline in their old age and early life as well.
