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Sitting for a long time shrinks your brain even if you exercise
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- inverted_flag 1y agoI wonder if this holds up in younger adults as well.
- readthenotes1 1y agoBased on figures 1, 2, 3, I wonder if it holds up in older adults
- electromech 1y agon = 404 p = 0.003 I'm too dumb to understand how that math works.
- j_bum 1y agoYep, I had the same exact thoughts. Would like to see the partial residuals plotted... Are they over fitting their model? I cannot understand how we can look at a set of data like that, see that there are, perhaps, *maybe* some associations, and then make such serious conclusions from the stats.
- DemocracyFTW2 1y agoPlease sit down and let me walk you through the figures
- ch4s3 1y ago807 ± 97 minutes sitting is a long time, around 13 hours.
- electromech 1y agoHold my beer... ... On second thought, grab me another beer.
- morkalork 1y agoWalking to the bathroom to pee out all the beer counts as moving right?
- ta988 1y agoWhat if it is the opposite and beeing sedentary is a marker of cognitive decline (in this case genetic, but maybe it is also the case for other risk factors).
- thayne 1y agoOr there are confounding factors. Like diet for example, or what these people are doing while they are sitting.
- somenameforme 1y agoThe good ole 'a glass a day of wine is healthy' issue. For those that don't know - it isn't. The numerous studies that found that all failed to account for a really simple issue. People who are unhealthy tend to give up drinking more frequently than those that aren't, even if for undiagnosed reasons. So it turns out that people that were drinking a tiny amount of alcohol, but not enough to start seeing the endless negative affects of alcohol, were healthier than those that drunk none, but only because of this bias. The right amount of alcohol, so far as health is concerned, is zero. It's quite insightful to see how this error then spawned a whole new series of 'approved' explanations for why wine was supposed to be healthy for you, such as antioxidants or whatever. In many fields everything remains extremely ad hoc - from brain plaque to serotonin, and I'll even add in intentional partial reps!
- Der_Einzige 1y agoMost of reality is just simpsons paradox again and again and again...
- verisimi 1y agoI didn't know about this, thanks for the explanation. > It's quite insightful to see how this error then spawned a whole new series of 'approved' explanations for why wine was supposed to be healthy for you, such as antioxidants or whatever. Your analysis provides a very nice example of how science studies can be meaningless. And that this isn't a problem, as long as someone is making money. How many years did we see yet another study being rolled out about France, red wine, red wine extracts in pill form, etc. And yet all that literature is based on a pretty obvious false assumption. That no one was inclined to correct.
- cko 1y agoAs someone who started a fully remote job (sedentary) 1.5 years ago, this worries me a bit. I've been reading that those giant bouncy balls and treadmill desks are a gimmick and that standing still for a long time gives you varicose veins. What is a good routine? Do I switch positions (right now I'm slav squatting) and maybe throw in some short bouts of exercise every 30 minutes?
- rogerrogerr 1y agoTreadmill desks aren’t a gimmick IME. I use one every day, I swear it helps with focus and generally feeling good. I’ve found out I can walk for longer than I can stand. Make sure to set a 3° incline to save your knees. I’d recommend trying it. This guy overanalyzed the whole topic, great resource: https://ocdevel.com/walk/guide#why_desk https://ocdevel.com/walk/guide#why_desk
- jeffbee 1y agoIt's not clear that a treadmill would even register as activity by their method, which requires sustained acceleration of the wrist, which wouldn't be happening if you can keyboard. For that matter, riding a bicycle at 40kph wouldn't count as activity, either.
- amluto 1y agoA bike at 40kph can have quite a lot of vibration. How much depends on the road and the bike.
- ensocode 1y ago2nd this. I've been using a treadmill desk for years now—walking about 4 hours a day while working. It’s cut my sedentary time in half. I definitely feel less fatigue, and overall more energized. Highly recommend trying it.
- Auracle 1y agoI concur, they’re far from a gimmick and the days I don’t put my treadmill under my desk I’m dragging by noon. You’d think it would tire you out but it absolutely does the opposite. Plus some days I burn something like 1,000 calories. That’s a pretty big bonus.
- ziofill 1y agoIs it just me or those scatter plots feel silly to fit with a straight line?
- iammrpayments 1y agoYes, but I never finished my “Intro to statistics” book, so I can’t confirm
- ekianjo 1y agoNot uncommon. Most of "science" is bad regression models applied on cloud of points. And then they think it means something.
- nessbot 1y agoSounds like the thought process behind this comment.
- Supermancho 1y agoDon't talk about yourself that way.
- reassess_blind 1y agoDid you just put science in quotes.
- Supermancho 1y agoSome studies are useful science. Some are bunk. Some we don't know until long after when they are replicated or are never spoken about again because they have no signal or utility. It's under the practice of science, to some degree.
- ekianjo 1y agoYou most published papers can't be reproduced? So in effect most of it is pure junk passing for science
- TibbityFlanders 1y ago[dead]
- actinium226 1y agoI see 3 problems so far: 1. Looking at the data, a linear regression is fit to data that looks anything but linear, calling into question the validity of the model 2. The units in some of the table are unclear, but overall it's not clear to me how much the brain shrinks in this data. As in, how significant of an effect is this? And I'm not talking about statistical significance. 3. This is correlation not causation. Maybe if your brain shrinks you can't focus long enough to move around.
- sinuhe69 1y agoYes. I also see problems in other areas: -they didn’t define the threshold for sedentary behavior beforehand, so it could be they just move the threshold to hack the p-value. At least, they could analyze with different thresholds then publish the results open for interpretation. - they didn’t control the effect of normal aging in older people. 7 years is a long period and by older people we can expect a decline in cognitive performance regardless of their life style. What we interest is however how much the sedentary live style contributes additionally to this decline. - because the authors rely solely on the smartwatch data and put all kinds of movements together (sitting, walking around, laying down), we can not see whether changing posture and moving around can help. - most importantly, they didn’t isolate and control for the amount of cognitive work. Doing cognitive demanding work is known to delaying worsening symptoms in AD and related diseases.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- max_ 1y agoWhen ever I sit for along time its to read a book or consume educational content (podcasts, non-ficton films). I usually feel more knowledgeable afterwards. What are some good cognitive tests to take (a part from IQ tests)?
- lwo32k 1y agoThe issue is not that people's brain degenerate. Cause the rest of the body is physically degenerating too. And most people would naturally die by the time they hit retirement age before symptoms of mental decay show up, as was the case before we got modern pharma and surgical procedures. But since we have more fixes for physical degeneration than mental degeneration, we see most sedentary people kept alive through medication and constant surgeries well into their 80s and 90s while there is nothing much to reverse whats happening to the brain. Having worked for a while at a hospital, I feel people who really haven't lead active lives or are just naturally less active or don't like too much activity fall into this trap, where the medical system will keep them physically alive for few decades longer than in the past. They need to be told this could be a trap. Instead we keep them alive, let their brains degenerate and study them like lab rats.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- chneu 1y agoThe book "Exercised" by Lieberman talks about this for a while. Basically, there's been an extension of life years, but there has also been an extension of the useless years at the end of people's lives. He makes a case that these useless years are a direct result of a lack of exercise. Good book. Recommend.
- danielbln 1y agoThat's something so many people forget. "I don't care about exercise, if I die at 80 then so what" - Ok, but those last years will suck balls as you are trapped on a shell of a body. Quality of life matters almost as much as longevity.
- Sohcahtoa82 1y agoI think about my grandma who basically hasn't had any semblance of quality of life in well over 5 years. At first, about 5 years ago, she struggled to walk. Anything over 30 feet and she had to stop for a couple minutes to catch her breath. At the time, she was refusing to use a walker since she would say "Those are for old people!" as if she wasn't already 80 years old. Of course, when you can't walk, you don't, and so everything gets worse. She eventually accepted that she needed a walker, but by then her knees had degraded so bad that even with it, she could barely move. Getting off the couch is an ordeal that requires two people to lift her up. She got dementia and is now basically bed-bound at a memory care facility. She stopped living and began merely surviving a minimum of 5 years ago, likely closer to 10 years. Personally, I never want to live like that. If I get to the point where I can't do anything, just put a bullet in me or something. I'm not afraid of dying. Until then, I'm hitting the gym 2-4x/week. Every time, at least 1,000 steps on the stair machine or 1.5 miles on a treadmill, plus some weights. I've only been going for about 3 months, hoping to increase my speed and endurance and turn it into 2,000 steps or 3 miles.
- plsbenice34 1y agoThe real article title says there is an association, while the HN title says there is causation ("Sitting for a long time shrinks your brain even if you exercise"). Very bad
- NetRunnerSu 1y agoφ matched orders in daily life... https://dmf-archive.github.io/ https://dmf-archive.github.io/
- rajnathani 1y agoThe study could have potential control issues, for example those sitting excessively would less likely travel and explore new places or be outside at social gatherings, both these small examples would potentially help stimulate the brain (loneliness is directly correlated with dementia risk [0]). [0] https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/loneliness-linked-dementia-risk-large-scale-analysis https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/loneliness-linked-dementia-risk...
- justlikereddit 1y agoMerely getting old is enough to reduce your brain volume, and a light shrinkage will have little association with cognitive decline
- tsoukase 1y agoGiven that mental decline can be traced 10-20 years before symptoms begin, the reverse can hold: an early symptom of mental illness is sedentary lifestyle (eg apathy) that is followed by the full constellation. Correlation is not... you know