Oct 27, 2020 23:00:00

Studies show that hard physical labor increases the risk of dementia

Exercise has many benefits for health and mental health, and is also known

to improve brain function . However, when investigating the effect of 'exercising by physical labor' on the risk of dementia, it was reported that 'heavy labor increases the risk of dementia'.

The effect of occupational physical activity on dementia: Results from the Copenhagen Male Study --Nabe-Nielsen --- Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports --Wiley Online Library
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sms.13846

Hard physical work significantly increases the risk of dementia
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-hard-physical-significantly-dementia.html

People who live a healthy life with daily physical activity are thought to have a reduced risk of dementia. A five-year follow-up study of 4615 elderly people with no cognitive problems found that older people who exercised more than three times a week with higher intensity than walking had more dementia than older people without exercise habits. It has been shown that the risk of developing the disease is low.

However, Kirsten Nabe-Nielsen, an associate professor of public health at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said that not all exercises help reduce the risk of dementia equally, and the effects may vary depending on the type of exercise. It seems that he thought there was.

So Nabe-Nielsen investigated how the risk of developing dementia changes between those engaged in manual labor and those who are basically desk work and exercise in their spare time. 'Before the study, we assumed that hard physical labor was associated with a high risk of dementia,' said Nabe-Nielsen.

The research team of Nabe-Nielsen and colleagues used the results of a questionnaire survey conducted by the University of Copenhagen in the 1970s. The survey conducted a survey of 4721 male workers aged 40 to 59 years old who worked for 14 companies based in Copenhagen from 1970 to 1971.

The questionnaire asks about the socio-economic status of men, their marital status, psychological stress, and how much they are physically active in their work. In addition, a follow-up survey was conducted from the age of 60 to 2016 for male workers, and it was identified that 697 people had dementia during the follow-up period.

Based on these data, the research team took into account factors such as age, smoking and alcohol habits, blood pressure, weight, and leisure physical activity. As a result, it was found that men who engaged in hard physical labor had a 55% higher risk of dementia than men who engaged in sedentary work. On the other hand, the research team reports that men who had more physical activity in their leisure time had a significantly lower risk of dementia than men who did not move much in their leisure time.

The results of this study cast doubt on the idea that any type of exercise has a positive effect on health. 'For example, the WHO guide to preventing dementia and illness mentions physical activity in general as an important factor, but our study shows that it is in a'good'form,' said Nabe-Nielsen. It has to be physical activity, suggesting that hard physical labor is not the case. '

The study's co-author, Professor Andreas Holtermann of the National Center for Working Environment Studies in Denmark, said that dementia prevention measures are active workers because the brain changes that cause dementia occur before people retire from work. Also pointed out that it should be targeted. He argued that it is necessary to take measures to improve health and prevent dementia not only in workplaces where desk work is the main concern and lack of exercise, but also in workplaces where there is a lot of physical labor.