
Thinning in brain regions important for memory linked to sedentary habits - neverminder
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180412141014.htm
======
scotchmi_st
> This study does not prove that too much sitting causes thinner brain
> structures, but instead that more hours spent sitting are associated with
> thinner regions, researchers said.

This is a bit of a non-story. The article doesn't go into what measures were
taken to eliminate confounding factors, and it seems from the way it's worded
that not many were taken. Maybe people who have a more sedentary lifestyle
also tend to come from a lower social background, thus are more prone to
physical and mental diseases. Or maybe people who sit more tend to be more
obese, and it's really obesity that's associated here. It doesn't take a
genius to think up more possible confounding variables. Also, a cohort of 35
people is tiny.

~~~
brownbat
> Maybe people who have a more sedentary lifestyle also tend to come from a
> lower social background

My favorite confound is when Pauling convinced many reasonably educated higher
SES people that vitamins were a miracle cure-all. Suddenly multivitamins did
correlate with higher health outcomes! (Until later studies untangled this and
found little broad effect, aside from specific vitamins during pregnancy or
specific deficiencies.)

Sort of a pop science self fulfilling prophecy. Or when we do things we think
are smart, sometimes we pollute the evidence.

~~~
0n34n7
Pop Science. Nice...

------
netman21
In my early career I was a car seat engineer which gave me a life long
interest in seats. If you look at historical chairs it is amazing how recently
the comfortable chair was introduced. I peg it at around 1920, about 30 years
after the Morris chair, which was the beginning. Think of the colonial era
Windsor chairs. You can imagine great thinkers sitting in them pulled up to
their desks creating and thinking. But no way could you sit for the 10-12
hours a day most HN readers do. Go back further to images of classic times.
Sitting devices were definitely not capable of being used for extended
periods. So yes, it is worth thinking about the impact of comfortable
furniture on how much we sit. But later. I am getting up to get a cup of
coffee.

~~~
w_t_payne
What can we do to support healthy physical posture and movement whilst also
maximising productivity when working with with electronic representations of
textual and numeric data?

There are some obvious avenues to explore -- but it is not clear if anything
is going to be available to consumers in the near future.

~~~
jgoodhcg
I'm really hoping VR headsets can provide a workspace where people can lay
down or stand. The keyboard replacement in those positions might be hard to
figure out.

~~~
ianai
That’s one of the easier problems. I just bought a split wireless keyboard. It
actually feels alright just laying it in my thighs to typ.

------
banachtarski
Nothing about what people were actually doing while they were sitting?
Watching TV? Staring into space? I don't know how to take something like this
seriously (after reading this article in its entirety, not the linked paper)

~~~
comboy
Seems like a critical piece of information. You could say that people who take
frequent brakes from their work to go outdoor and stand there for a while are
likely to die younger. That's smokers behavior.

If it was random sample from general population then I'm betting on watching
TV. Studies seem to suggest that if you are doing a lot of cognitive work it
is good for your brain and memory. Apart from the somewhat new trend of
standing desks, most jobs that are about thinking are done in a sitting
position.

------
hownottowrite
“UCLA researchers recruited 35 people ages 45 to 75 and asked about their
physical activity levels and the average number of hours per day they spent
sitting over the previous week.“

~~~
rambojazz
Isn't UCLA among the top universities in the world? How can they publish a
research like this (asking a few questions to 35 people) and draw such
formidable conclusions? The title sounds like they've discovered something new
that applies to all humans...

~~~
TangoTrotFox
It becomes quite evident in studies like this, but nearly all social science
related studies are based on the exact same pattern. For instance the
emotional intelligence study, which has been repeatedly cited and been
reasonably influential, was based on putting people into groups, having them
do tasks such as [literally] writing a shopping list, and then showing that
the groups that did the tasks most efficiently were not strictly composed of
those that had the highest IQ. So therefore it was implied that individual
merit alone does not determine results of groups, but rather some 'emotional
intelligence' does.

It's absolutely atrocious logic since B is in no way implied from A. For
instance to show this then you would need to, at the minimum, put the people
that all individually do the best at e.g. writing a shopping list, into a
group, and then compare them against people that individually do worse but
score well on the [again literally] 'Reading the Eyes in the Mind' test that
was used to measure 'emotional intelligence'. Of course that was not done, and
I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate because we know what the result
would be - and that's not publishable. Yet bad science paired with an
astounding headline and you are suddenly good to go.

Yeah, a bit of a rant but it's incredibly disappointing how awful the social
sciences have become. And that decline pairs ironically with a massive
increase in the reporting of their results, which become ever more grand and
increasingly clickbaity, in the media.

~~~
oldmancoyote
Are you equating IQ with merit? If so, you need to broaden your perspective.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
My opinion is not relevant one way or the other. I am describing the study.

------
ourmandave
A "sitting is killing you" article based on a _study of 35 people._

Is this going to launch another wave of conflicting articles published every-
other-week saying how to minimize it?

"Eat fish 5 times a day while standing!"

"New study: fish 10 times while doing squats!"

"Latest: the fish does nothing! You need a 'weightless desk' in low earth
orbit."

~~~
amarant
Man that last idea sounds sweet! I'm up for that whether it prolongs my life
or not!

------
EGreg
This seems to contradict another article posted on HN I read recently, which
says memories are lost due to brain cell growth after physical activity!

[https://www.vox.com/2014/5/8/5695500/why-cant-you-
remember-b...](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/8/5695500/why-cant-you-remember-
being-a-baby-science-explains)

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/how-brain-deletes-
old...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/how-brain-deletes-old-memories)

Which contradicts yet another article which says that growing new brain cells
can improve memory:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1244332/How-
runnin...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1244332/How-running-jog-
memory-creating-new-brain-cells.html)

So which is it? I think we need scientists to take two contradicting studies
and try to find out the root cause of a discrepancy, instead of making a third
study. To do that, they need to record as much as they can, and a meta-study
needs to look at the actual discrepancies that can account for a change.

[https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem-
prove...](https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem-proved-esp-
is-real-showed-science-is-broken.html)

~~~
jaclaz
> I think we need scientists to take two contradicting studies and try to find
> out the root cause of a discrepancy, instead of making a third study.

Yes, the shorter form being ;-) :

I think we need scientists.

------
oblib
I don't know if my brain has "thinned" but I do know that after sitting for
years coding I started experiencing a pinched nerve in my back, and that ain't
no fun.

I thought I was having a stroke the first time it happened about six months
ago. I realized it was a pinched nerve after looking into it but it took
several months to figure out exactly what stretches I needed to do to relieve
and prevent them.

~~~
ianai
Where’d you track that info down?

~~~
SuoDuanDao
Not OP, but I actually went to a physiotherapist. Well worth the investment if
they know what they're doing.

~~~
ianai
Very very true. They’ve helped me immensely in the past.

------
kartan
"The researchers next hope to follow a group of people for a longer duration
to determine if sitting causes the thinning and what role gender, race, and
weight might play in brain health related to sitting."

This is just a preliminary study. It´s too soon to get any conclusions. But,
it´s a good starting point for a hypothesis. I will like to see the results of
the final study, even that is going to take a long time.

I have seen many times links between sedentary life and illness. But this one
looks promising as tries to find a mechanism on why this happens at the brain
level that may affect cognition.

And yes, before doing a more expensive study, they asked 35 people for a
preliminary study. You don´t spend a lot of money to try to prove something
without first trying to disprove it on the cheap. Translation for developers:
before spending a lot of time to test something you first do a smoke test. If
it passes you invest the time to test it fully. Otherwise, you go back to
writing code.

------
dombesz
I wonder if this is true for physical inactivity in general? I suspect that
using a standing desk instead of sitting down wouldn’t change the situation.

------
pbhjpbhj
Interesting they do manual segmenting, who's working on image recognition to
automate measuring of the various areas - presumably then all past scans [with
patient acceptance] could be fed in to a system and the brain regions could be
measured and classified.

The correlation graphs are awesome!

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/j...](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0195549.g002)

Not sure you could get a better randomisation if you tried with just 35
points??!

------
theprotocol
Perhaps people who are either predisposed toward unhealthy outcomes, or are
currently experiencing them (whether they realize it or not) are more
sedentary. Correlation does not establish causation.

~~~
callesgg
Um yes, the title should be more like:

"Sitting correlates to Thinning in certain brain regions"

~~~
nonbel
Is it bad to have a "thin" brain and good to have a "fat" brain now?

Can't this brain region become too large? What if the area is enlarged due to
inflammation/swelling and these people with "thinning" are those without that
problem?

If the brain is too large it is considered a problem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalencephaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalencephaly)

This guy apparently has the second largest brain ever measured, and he was a
serial killer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_H._Rulloff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_H._Rulloff)

~~~
MikkoFinell
The study was regarding density, not size.

~~~
nonbel
Where are you seeing that? Also, fine density/volume/mass, does it really
change the argument?

There is some optimal size for this region when it comes to certain functions,
probably relative to the size of other regions. That size is probably
suboptimal when it comes to other functions and there are tradeoffs going on.

The press release seems to be assuming that thinner is bad automatically.

~~~
always_good
> The press release seems to be assuming that thinner is bad automatically.

Well, it's not unreasonable.

I don't know of any literature that says that a sedentary lifestyle is healthy
for the brain, but a lot of it has found the opposite. I would like to avoid
anything that reproduces the neurological effects of being sedentary.

~~~
nonbel
>"I don't know of any literature that says that a sedentary lifestyle is
healthy for the brain"

Here are two I found:

>"More sedentary behavior was strongly predictive of more depressive
symptomatology and, unexpectedly, of better cognitive performance."
[https://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/pdf/10.1123/japa.13.3...](https://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/pdf/10.1123/japa.13.3.294)

>"Self-reported sedentary behavior was related to better performance on one
cognitive task (trails A; p < .05)."
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4861254/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4861254/)

Obviously these are "undesirable" results, so you have to look a little bit
deeper to find them.

------
whb07
Time and time again more evidence is propping up stating the benefits of
exercise. I think Patio11 summed it up well, roughly stating that as we are
all working with the same hardware(the body) then we should work to maintain
it in top shape.

If you maintain your body in a weak state, it would seem that your body would
have to maximize its output with a lesser performing system. Imagine trying to
perform well when you have a heart that’s got 1/4 the performance of a well
maintained one.

Imagine the downstream effects of all this!

------
pessimizer
Maybe people ages 45 through 75 are going through the period of life which we
traditionally associate with both a lowering of physical activity and
increasing difficulties in memory. Sure would be nice if they linked the study
or seriously cared about critiquing it.

The real question should be whether both are also strongly associated with
grey hair, number of grandchildren, and taste in film.

------
epmaybe
Here is the actual paper, for your reference. I'm appalled that ScienceDaily
did not link this in their article.

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0195549)

~~~
nonbel
Here is the activity survey:

[http://www.sdp.univ.fvg.it/sites/default/files/IPAQ_English_...](http://www.sdp.univ.fvg.it/sites/default/files/IPAQ_English_self-
admin_long.pdf)

The paper was confusing because they reported an average of 7 hours sitting
each day and 1500 minutes per week of "physical activity" (3.5 hrs a day). So
basically anything besides sitting and sleeping seems to be counted as
physical activity.

It does sound like almost anything is counted as physical activity: "on how
many days did you do moderate activities like carrying light loads, washing
windows, scrubbing floors and sweeping inside your home"

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nadohs
Maybe people with thinning in brain region associate with memory overestimate
the amount of time sitting because they can’t recall as accurately what they
were doing in between sitting sessions...

------
huffmsa
Not even 3 months ago it was "standing desk users less focused, less
productive". Which might be more about the kind of person a standing desk user
is than it's effect.

~~~
Bakary
My anecdotal experience tells me that those who adopt many efficiency boosting
methods (standing desks, optimized keyboard layouts, various lifehacks,
extreme customization of their work environment…) tend to be less inclined to
focus on the actual work.

------
HankB99
Yes. And television is bad for your eyes.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXCpYgd338U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXCpYgd338U)

------
FLUX-YOU
I just want a study that tells me the intensity and frequency of exercise that
counter-acts the sitting plague.

By now, all sitting studies sound like they're stating the obvious.

~~~
rtehfm
Apparently, there's no _true_ offset for extended hours of sitting[1]. There
might be some science/studies behind smart watches urging you to stand for a
couple of minutes every hour, however.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/the-
new-e...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/the-new-exercise-
mantra/495908/)

~~~
wwayer
A lot of people make a living sitting in a chair all day. What are we all
supposed to do instead? The implications of this are pretty far-reaching.

~~~
always_good
> What are we all supposed to do instead?

Depends on how much you care and how able you are to compel yourself into
action.

Almost every one of us reading this is in a position to abbreviate our work
with physical activity at the very least. I just wager that most of us are too
addicted to comfort to actually do anything about it in the face of the
evidence. For example, we already know that a sedentary lifestyle is bad yet
most people don't exercise.

------
agumonkey
what about the dual? moving, either walking, driving or longer always
stimulates my brain. To the point that not moving I find myself very silent
and believed I had a problem.

------
eruci
That's why I'm laying down.

------
z28w
Conclusion drawn from experiment on 35 samples? Must be kidding...

~~~
always_good
Taking issue with small sample sizes is a popular way for the layperson to
chime in with criticism, but it is rather empty and uneducated criticism.

In statistics, sample size does not tell you if correlations are significant
or not. Which is why it's amusing when someone thinks they are being a
statistics pedant by pointing out a small sample size.

~~~
projektir
I think this is worth challenging. A small sample means there's a higher
likelihood that the sample is not very random. It's often pulled from some
easily available source, like a group of college students.

An idealized perfect random small sample might be just fine for statistics,
but there's little reason to believe that's the sample we're getting. Small
samples should be a cause for suspicion.

------
jaimex2
Anti clickbait tldr: Too much sitting is ASSOCIATED with thinning brain
structures.

