The research participants recorded and reported how much time they spent daily on these two sedentary activities.
People who sit for long hours in front of TVface an increased likelihood of developing dementia in the future, a new American scientific study shows.
This correlation is mainly attributed to sedentary behavior, which has long been associated with the onset of cardiometabolic disease and is now being extended to dementia. But the same is not true of computer use, which is also a sedentary activity but does not appear to increase the risk of dementia.
The researchers, led by Dr David Reichlen of the University of Southern California, who made the relevant publication in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the US (PNAS), analyzed data on 146,651 people over the age of 60 who had not been diagnosed with dementia at the start of the study.
See the scientific study here.
Participants recorded and reported how much time they spent each day on two sedentary activities, watching TV and using a computer, as well as how much time they spent on physical exercise and other physical activities. After about 12 years, 3,507 people had been diagnosed with dementia.
After other risk factors (obesity, alcohol use, occupation, etc.) were taken into account, the study concluded that there is a clear link between a lot of time in front of the TV and the risk of future dementia. The risk was somewhat reduced if one combined watching too much TV with high levels of physical activity.
In contrast, it was found that the least time in computer was associated with an increased risk of dementia in the future, possibly because computer use, although sedentary, is one mentally interactive activity which keeps the brain alert. The researchers concluded that in the end, when it comes to dementia risk, it is not so much total sitting time that matters more, but what exactly that sitting time is spent on, since TV but not computer use increases dementia risk.
RES-EMP
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