Dementia expert warns people in specific jobs are 60% more likely to develop disease

A health expert has warned that some jobs could increase a person’s risk of developing dementia by up to 60 per cent.

Brain professor David Raichlen shared this warning on a new episode of Steven Bartlett’s podcast, Diary of a CEO. The expert, who specialises in human and evolutionary biology at the University of Southern California, discussed the impact that sitting for a long time has on the brain.

Professor Raichlen warned that those who sit for a long period of the day – due to their job or lifestyle – are at a higher risk of dementia, reports the Mirror. He said: “If you sit for 10 hours a day compared to nine hours a day, it’s about a 10% increased risk of dementia. If you sit for 12 hours a day, it’s about a 60% increased risk of dementia. It’s a problem that we have to deal with.”

Jobs that require people to sit down for an extended period of time include the likes of:

• Bus drivers
• Receptionists
• Train drivers
• Freelance writers
• Judges
• Software engineers
• Accountants
• Graphic designers
• Dispatchers
• Data entry workers
• Heavy vehicle drivers

Raichlen said: “Over the last few decades we’ve realized that you can generate new neurons, especially in key areas of the brain like the hippocampus – which is associated with memory. That growth of new neurons may be the key to preventing or staving off these neurodegenerative diseases that have this big impact on the aging brain.”

The expert also explained how we make new brain cells through physical activity, as he said: “The optimal amount of physical activity is 150 minutes per week, but only 25% of adults in the US meet those guidelines. Older adults only do two to four minutes per day.

dementia

“But there are these small activities that provide big benefits that generate new neurons and those neurons get integrated into key parts of the brain.”

Professor Raichlen also said that studies have suggested that being active could stop our brains from aging too quickly, and “maybe even prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias”.

A study from September 2023 in JAMA says if you’re not moving much for 10 hours or more a day, you might have a bigger chance of getting dementia later on.

In the study, 50,000 people without dementia wore a wrist accelerometer for a week that tracked their daily movement. After six years of the experiment, researchers checked who had been diagnosed with dementia and compared this with the activity readings from the start of the study.

The study found that those who were inactive for at least 10 hours a day were more likely to develop dementia than those who moved more.

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