Doing a physical job compared to a sedentary job would increase the risk of developing a form of dementia by 55%.
- Dementia strikes more people who have heavy manual jobs than those who have a sedentary job.
- The physical activity submitted to our body is much too intense for our body, which also degrades it mentally.
In a manual job, it’s not just the muscles, joints and skeleton that suffer. According to researchers from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), people who work hard and manual jobs have a 55% increased risk of developing a form of dementia compared to those who work sedentarily. The conclusions of this study were published on October 10, 2020 in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.
Two types of physical activity
In the collective unconscious, having regular physical activity would help maintain good health and promote a healthy lifestyle. But not all physical activity is created equal.
“The WHO guide for the prevention of dementia and diseases as a whole mentions physical activity as an important factor. But our study suggests that it must be a ‘good’ form of physical activity, which is not the case with physical work. Health authorities should therefore differentiate between physical activity in leisure time and physical activity at work, as there is reason to believe that the two forms of physical activity have opposite effects.says Kirsten Nabe-Nielsen, professor of public health at the University of Copenhagen. Previous studies have suggested that intense physical labor can have a negative effect on blood circulation to the heart and blood supply to the brain. This can for example lead to the development of cardiovascular diseases like hypertension, blood clots in the heart, heart cramps and heart failure..” Could it lead to dementia?
Damage body and mind
To support this hypothesis, the researchers used data from a Danish longitudinal study from 1970, which analyzed 4,721 men aged 40 at the time, and the tasks they performed daily at work. Over the years, researchers have compiled data on the health of these men, including the evolution of cases of dementia. When the study ended in 2016, they found that participants who performed manual jobs were in poorer physical and mental health than those who had sedentary jobs.
“Many workplaces have already taken steps to improve the health of their staff. The problem is that it is the most educated part of the population that uses these initiativeslaments Andreas Holtermann, professor at the National Center for Work Environment Research in Denmark and co-author of the study. People with a lower level of education often face overweight, pain and poor physical condition, even if they take more steps during the day and use their body more as a tool. For manual workers, it is not enough, for example, to avoid heavy lifting if they wish to remain in the profession until they are 70 years old. People with shorter training and performing manual labor should also take preventive measures by strengthening their body’s capabilities, for example through exercises and strength training.”
Andres Holtermann and his colleagues continue to work to identify healthier ways to perform difficult or strenuous physical labor. By coordinating his work with health professionals and social workers, he wants to organize interventions in companies to modify the different ways of working.
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