Not Either/Or, It’s Both/And
A new study published in JAMA Network Open last week found that adequate physical activity and lower screen time during adolescents appears to be an important recipe for maintaining normal body weight. Importantly for teenagers, one without the other doesn’t do it.
We already know that sedentary behavior increases the risk of developing overweight and obesity, which the National Institutes of Health recognizes as a chronic disease. For teenagers especially, the behavior and the consequences only got worse during the pandemic:
Currently, the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans published by the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity per day for adolescents; however, in the last 5 years, the proportion of US adolescents meeting these guidelines decreased to lower than 25%, with subsequent reductions to lower than 10% during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This decrease in physical activity has been accompanied by an increase in recreational screen use time, which has nearly tripled in the past few decades and also increased substantially during the pandemic.
The researchers studied a demographically diverse group of 10-to-14 year olds and discovered that the combination of low physical activity (measured in step count per day) and high screen time (hours per day) was linked to overweight and obesity. Being physically active but having high screen time didn’t help the teenagers’ body mass index. By the same token, having less screen time but staying inactive didn’t help much either. Both — high physical activity and low screen time — must occur in combination in order to see a positive effect.
How many steps should teenagers take, and how much screen time should be allowed to reduce the risk of overweight and obesity?
The results suggest that the combination of less than 4 hours per day of screen time and greater than 12, 000 steps per day of physical activity is beneficial to minimize the risk of higher BMI percentile.
source https://www.thepediablog.com/2023/02/16/not-either-or-its-both-and/
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