Teens not exercising enough, says study

Adolescents are unlikely to satisfy physical activity (PA) guidelines, a recent study has shown. This failure may promote adiposity and correlates with adverse cardiometabolic factors.

“The objective of this study was to examine the collective influence of meeting the PA, sleep, and dietary guidelines on cardiometabolic risk factors and adiposity, as these behaviours may be interrelated,” researchers said.

The study included 251 adolescents (mean age, 12.5±1.9 years; 45.8 percent male) who were given accelerometers for the measurement of sleep and PA. The sleep target was 9–11 hours per night for 10–13-year-olds and 8–10 hours per night for 14–16-year-olds. The recommended exercise level was ≥60 minutes per day of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA).

More than half of the participants (51.8 percent) met the sleep guidelines. Almost half were able to fulfill at least one behavioural guideline (47.0 percent), which included benchmarks for diet, as measured by the Healthy Eating Index, aside from sleep and exercise.

In comparison, only 11.6 percent satisfied the PA guidelines, and only 18.0 percent were able to adhere to two or more behavioural guidelines.

In turn, this may compound adiposity in the participants. Each additional 10 minutes per day of MVPA led to a significant drop of 4.10±0.9 units in body mass index (BMI) percentile (p=0.001). Meeting the PA guideline was also an indicator of lower individual and total cardiometabolic risk scores and adiposity measures.

Similarly, fulfilling sleep and dietary guidelines yielded better outcomes, including lower BMI and body fat and a lower risk of poor insulin resistance.