You might think your daily workout gives you a free pass to lounge around because you’re safe from the cataclysmic effects that sitting all day has on your body and mind. Nope.
We recently found out that sitting too much can lead to heart disease. And now, according to a new study, sitting will rot your brain regardless of how much you try to balance it out with exercise. It’s especially true for people over 50 who indulge in binge-sitting sessions for hours at a time.
Researchers from Vanderbilt University, University of Pittsburgh, and Seoul National University tracked 404 adults over seven years, using wearables to monitor their movement (or lack thereof). Nearly 90 percent of participants met the standard of 150 minutes of moderate weekly exercise, yet those who sat more still showed worse brain health. They had thinner hippocampi (that’s your memory center) and showed signs of faster cognitive decline, which opens the door to Alzheimer’s.
This study throws a wrench into the long-standing belief that exercise balances out the damage of sedentary living. There’s no such thing as balancing it out. Simply sitting for too long does permanent damage. “Minimizing the time spent sitting, even if you do exercise daily, reduces the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease,” says one of the study’s authors, Dr. Marissa Gogniat from the University of Pittsburgh.
Note that the effects weren’t massive, but they were meaningful. Even among those genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s, the link between prolonged sitting and brain wear-and-tear was stronger. The findings are clear: If you’ve got risk factors, your brain is even more allergic to physical laziness.
Of course, no one’s suggesting you give up exercising because all hope is lost, so why even bother. The crucial takeaway here is that we all have to rethink how and why we are so stationary all day. It’s not just about squeezing in a jog to break up a day that would’ve otherwise been entirely sedentary. It’s squeezing in that jog, while also squeezing in little moments of movement throughout what otherwise would have been an entirely sedentary day.
You don’t even need to do that much throughout the day. The findings don’t suggest that you should break into a full Olympic-style sprint between your cubicle and the copy machine. All you’ve got to do is stand up every once in a while, stretch a little bit, walk a little bit to break up your day.
If you’re on a call, consider pacing around rather than sitting there for its duration. If you’re playing video games all day, consider throwing the controller in a blind rage so you have a reason to walk across the room as you pick it up. Your hippocampus will be better off for it.
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