Stay Active, Stay Healthy: Physical Activity Reduces Risk of Dementia and Sleep Disorders, Study Finds - Video

People who get moderate to vigorous physical activity may be less likely to develop dementia, stroke, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders, according to a recent preliminary study that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 77th Annual Meeting .

The study also found that the more time people spent sitting, the more likely they were to develop one of these diseases.

“This research highlights the role of physical activity and sedentary behavior as modifiable factors that may enhance

brain health and reduce the incidence of these diseases,” said study author Jia-Yi Wu, MD, of Fudan University in Shanghai, China. “It is promising to think that encouraging people to make these lifestyle changes could potentially lessen the burden of these diseases in the future.”

Researchers looked at data from 73,411 people with an average age of 56 who wore accelerometer devices continuously for seven days to measure their physical activity, how much energy they used on their activities and how much time they spent sitting each day.

The study results showed that people who had moderate to vigorous physical activity energy expenditure were 14% to 40% less likely to develop the five diseases than those who had lower energy expenditure, depending on how active they were.

The people who did not develop any of the diseases had an average daily moderate to vigorous physical activity energy expenditure of 1.22 kilojoules per kilogram, compared to 0.85 for the people who developed dementia, 0.95 for those who developed sleep disorders, 1.02 for stroke, 1.08 for depression and 1.10 for anxiety.

The more time people spent sitting, the higher their risk of developing one of the diseases, with the increase ranging from 5% to 54% higher than those who spent the least amount of time sitting.

A limitation of the study was that 96% of the participants were white people, so the results may not apply to other groups.

Ref: American Academy of Neurology’s 77th Annual Meeting