A new preliminary study that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 77th Annual Meeting suggests that people who get more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity are less likely to develop dementia, stroke, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders compared to their peers who get less exercise.
The prospective cohort study included 73,411 participants from a large database in the United Kingdom. Participants wore accelerometers for 17 days during the study to measure their physical activity, sedentary behavior (time spent sitting), and energy expenditure on different activities. Energy expenditure was quantified used metabolic equivalents (METs). One MET is the energy you spend at rest, and more intense exercises have higher MET values. Physical activity has been previously associated with a lower risk of many chronic diseases, and the goal of this study was to see how energy expenditure on different tasks is related to the development of neuropsychiatric diseases.
The results showed that people with higher daily energy expenditures on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were less likely to develop dementia, stroke, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders. Depending on how active they were, those who had some level of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity energy expenditure were 14% to 40% less likely to develop the above diseases compared to those who did not participate in moderate-to-vigorous activity. Conversely, people who spent more time sitting had a higher risk of developing the diseases, with increased risk ranging from 5% to 54% higher than those who spent the least amount of time sitting. Increased risk was correlated with more time spent in sedentary behavior.
The authors noted that this study included a large number of participants, and that the data in the study came from devices rather than from individual self-reporting. This means that the data in this study was more robust than the data reported in many previous studies. The results emphasize the importance of exercise in reducing the risk of chronic diseases, including those related to the cardiovascular system and brain.
Sources: AAN, Science Daily
