Deans' stroke musings: Mentally Active Versus Passive Sedentary Behavior and Risk of Dementia: 19-Year Cohort Study

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Saturday, May 9, 2026

Mentally Active Versus Passive Sedentary Behavior and Risk of Dementia: 19-Year Cohort Study

As I'm sitting I'm invariable reading research papers and writing this blog

Mentally Active Versus Passive Sedentary Behavior and Risk of Dementia: 19-Year Cohort Study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2026.108317 Get rights and content

Under a Creative Commons license

Open access

Introduction

Sedentary behavior (sitting/reclining) has been associated with depression in adults, but the relationship with dementia remains unclear. To address this, associations of mentally passive (e.g., TV-viewing) and mentally active (e.g., office work) sedentary behaviors with incident dementia were examined, including how theoretically replacing mentally passive sedentary behavior with mentally active sedentary behavior, light and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity impacts incident dementia risk.

Methods

Data originate from the Swedish National March Cohort, including 20,811 adults aged 35–64 years (baseline, 1997). Incident dementia was identified through a linkage (2016) with the Swedish National Patient Register and the Swedish Cause of Death Register. Passive and mentally active sedentary behaviors as well as light and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were also assessed using questionnaires. Analyses included single, partition, and substitution Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for potential confounders. Analyses were conducted in 2025.

Results

There were 569 incident cases of dementia over 393,104 person-years; median follow-up time was 19.2 years. Mentally passive sedentary behavior was associated with a higher incidence of dementia in crude (hazard ratio=1.16, 95% CI=1.11, 1.22) but not adjusted models (hazard ratio=1.04, 95% CI=0.98, 1.10). Each additional 1 hour per day of mentally active sedentary behavior was associated with a 4% lower risk for developing dementia (hazard ratio=0.96, 95% CI=0.93, 0.98). There was a significant age interaction, indicating a higher protective effect of mentally active sedentary behavior among older participants (aged 50–64 years). In the partition models accounting for all behaviors, increasing 1 hour per day of mentally active sedentary behavior, while maintaining passive sedentary behavior and light and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity constant, was associated with an 11% lower risk for incident dementia (hazard ratio=0.89, 95% CI=0.81, 0.97). Similarly, substituting 1 hour per day of passive sedentary behavior with the same amount of mentally active sedentary behavior was associated with a 7% reduction in the risk for incident dementia (hazard ratio=0.93, 95% CI=0.87, 0.99).

Conclusions

Mentally passive sedentary behavior may increase the risk of dementia. Replacing passive with mentally active sedentary behaviors or with physical activity may reduce the risk of dementia in older adults.