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Wisdom Wednesdays: Is Your Job Protecting You From, Or Contributing to, Your Risk Of Dementia · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about your job and is it
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: contributing to or reducing your risk of dementia. So I'm
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: going to pull a couple of different lines of research
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: into this, and the first was a study published in JAMA,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the Journal of the American Medical Association that looked at
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: about fifty thousand people in the uk Biobank study. So
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: if you've listened to this podcast, you know that this
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: is the Biobank. Uk Biobank Study is a gift that
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: keeps on giving. There are a huge amount of people
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: who are constantly pokest and broaded and asked about their lifestyle,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and then we follow them up and see who gets
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: chronic disease or dies early and see who doesn't, and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: they're able to make some imprinces about these So this
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: study is showed. This was looking at the amount of
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: time that you spend sitting and your risk of dementia.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: So those who sat for about ten hours a day
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: had an eight percent increased risk of dementia. For those
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: who sat for nine hours or less, those who sat
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: for twelve hours a day had a whopping sixty three
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: percent increased risk of dementia versus those who's had for
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: nine hours or less and those who's had for a
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: whopping fifteen hours, which there's a lot of sitting, they
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: had a two hundred and twenty one percent increased risk
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: of dementia versus those who sat for nine hours or less. Now,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of people, whenever I talk about sitting, they
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: completely underestimate the amount of time that they sit. What
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: we know is that if you have an office job
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: or a pretty sedentary job, if you're in work for
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: eight hours, the typical individual will sit for six and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a half of that. Right now, Before that, you've got
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: to think about what you do in the morning when
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: you get up and whether you sit down for breakfast.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Then you got to think about your commute and how
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: long you spend sitting. And then the work doesn't include
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the lunchtime, so you got to think about that time.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Then you got to think about if you commute home
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: as well. You add that sitting in. So we've got
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: those things plus the six and a half hours if
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: you're in a sedentary job, and then we come home
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and we've had a hard day, so we relax, and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: it is very easy to accumulate those twelve plus rs
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: a day. And what they also find that exercise doesn't
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: undo all of the effects. So, and I've talked about
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: this before, being sedentary is a completely independent risk factor
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  Speaker 1: from sitting. So what I mean by that is that
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: you can sit a lot and exercise and you still
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: have one risk factor for chronic disease. But if you
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: sit a lot and you don't exercise, you don't have
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: two who different risk factors for chronic disease, and they
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: become additive to some extent. So it's thinking about all
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: of the stuff that you're doing. And we know that
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: breaking up the periods of prolonged sitting is really really key.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to get to that at the end
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: because another bit of research I want to talk about
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  Speaker 1: was showing that jobs were your reasonably active physically, they
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: actually reduced a risk of dementia. But a study in
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the landsets showed that the most physically demanding jobs actually
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: increased the risk of dementia. And these guys had a
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: bar roughly fifty to sixty percent increased risk of dementia
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: for people who were moderately physically active in their jobs.
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  Speaker 1: Now there was a bit of nuance under it, because
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: these jobs often had a lack of autonomy, They had
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: prolonged standing and the work was hard. There was rigid workers,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: and there was a lot of stress and risk of
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: burnout and sometimes inconvenient working days. So it's not just
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: about being physically active. It's a physically active, stressful, rigid
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: job that seems to carry those extra risks. Now, another
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: line of research actually looks about the cognitive stimulation in
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: your job, and this was a study of seven thousand
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Norwegians who had three hundred and five different occupations across them,
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  Speaker 1: and what they found was that the jobs that were
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the least mentally challenging, that had a lot of routine,
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  Speaker 1: unchallenging work, actually were sixty six percent more likely to
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: have mild cognitive impowerment when they became older adults and
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  Speaker 1: thirty one percent more likely to have dementia after the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: years of seventy compared to those who had mentally sorry
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: taxing jobs. So there is a bit of a balance
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: to be played here. You don't want to be doing
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: a job that is boring as batshit and has lots
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of routine, but you want to have a job that
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: is actually mentally taxing, but not really rigorously physically taxing
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: as well. So probably the best job is one that
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: is quite mentally taxing, where you have to think about stuff,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: and you know that's pretty obvious how that is going
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: to keep your brain young and healthy. But ideally you
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: should be having the opportunity to move a reasonable amount.
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  Speaker 1: And then the worst job is one that you're sitting
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: all day long doing very routine tasks, or you're doing
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: stuff that is really stressful and highly physically stressful and
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a lack of autonomy and all of those things. So
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: ways things that we can do. We know that actually
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: breaking up our sitting is really really key. And I
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: mentioned this a little bit earlier on. I've actually just
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: taken delivery of a little Pomodoro clock, which is pretty
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: cool because I'm a massive fan of that technique. And
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: that's basically where you're in control of your diary. You
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: work in thirty minute chunks, and then you get up
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  Speaker 1: and you move for five minutes and take a little break,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: get up and move, do some breathing, drink some water.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: That is like taking your brain out and plugging it
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  Speaker 1: into a wall, but getting up every thirty minutes and moving,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: either doing a little bit of vigorous activity, running up
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and down a couple of flights of stirs, or walking
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: for a few minutes. That actual movement off sets a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: lot of the changes in gene expression that are associated
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: with prolonged sitting, so that the worst thing that you
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: can do is sit for long periods of time. So
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: ideally use the Pomodoro technique, have those regular breaks, standing meetings,
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  Speaker 1: walking meetings. They're great ideas. And another rule that I
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: have is never ever sit when you're on the phone,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: So when the phone rings, you have to stand up
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: or walk around to answer that phone, because there is
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: huge value in just breaking up that sitting because the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: inactivity physiology we know is pretty damn horrible. So that's
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  Speaker 1: it for this week, folks, catch you next time.