The Health Impact of Sedentary Behaviour In Children and Youth

Abstract

Emerging evidence suggests that sedentary behaviour is independently associated with cardiometabolic disease risk in school-aged children and youth. This thesis includes 4 related studies in the pursuit of 2 objectives: 1) To determine the cross-sectional association of sedentary time, interruptions in sedentary time, sedentary bout length, and total movement variability with markers of cardiometabolic disease risk among children and youth, and 2) To examine the impact of 1-day of prolonged sedentary behaviour, with and without interruptions or structured physical activity, on markers of cardiometabolic disease risk, hunger, food intake and spontaneous physical activity levels in children and youth. In Study 1, we found that interruptions in sedentary time and short bouts of sedentary time were beneficially associated with clustered cardiometabolic disease risk in boys and girls aged 8-11 years, independent of total sedentary time, moderate-and-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and other confounders (all p<0.05), while the opposite was true for screen based sedentary behaviours. In Study 2, we found that movement variability (minute-to-minute changes in movement intensity) was negatively associated with clustered cardiometabolic disease risk and systolic blood pressure independent of MVPA, sedentary time and other covariates in a representative sample of American children and youth aged 12-17 years (all p<0.05). In Studies 3 and 4, we found that prolonged sitting, with or without interruptions and structured MVPA did not result in acute changes in markers of cardiometabolic disease risk, nor subsequent ad libitum food intake or physical activity levels in healthy children aged 10-14 years (all p ≥0.05). Taken together, the studies that make up this thesis suggest that optimal levels of cardiometabolic disease risk are most likely to be seen in children who limit their time engaging in screen-based sedentary behaviours, who frequently interrupt their sedentary time, and who have high levels of variability in their movement behaviours.