Associations between Adherence to Combinations of 24-h Movement Guidelines and Overweight and Obesity in Japanese Preschool Children.

Hyunshik Kim,Kenji Harada,Jiameng Ma,Ying Gu,Sunkyoung Lee

doi:10.3390/ijerph17249320

Abstract

The interactions between movement behaviors (physical activity, screen time, and sleep) affect the health of preschool children. Therefore, we examined the status of adherence to combinations of 24-hour movement guidelines (24-h MG) in Japanese preschool children and determined the associations between overweight/obesity and adherence to these 24-h MG. This cross-sectional study was conducted with 421 children aged 3–5 years (216 boys and 199 girls) living in the northeastern region of Japan. To evaluate the 24-h MG, physical activity over one week was measured using a three-axis accelerometer. For screen time and sleep duration, a questionnaire survey was conducted. Children who failed to meet all the 24-h MG had a higher probability of overweight/obesity than those who met all the 24-h MG (odds ratio 1.139, 95% confidence interval: 1.009, 1.285). The percentage of adherence to the 24-h MG was 91.6% for physical activity, 82.5% for sleep duration, and 33.7% for screen time, and only 21.5% of the children adhered to all three areas of the guidelines. Our findings have important implications for developing public health policies and effective intervention programs for preschool children.

Highlights

Childhood is a time of rapid physical and mental development during which time a child’s lifestyle habits are formed and changes and adaptations are made to the environment
The results of the present study demonstrated that 82.5% of children met the daily sleep duration guidelines of 10 to 13 h [29,32], which was similar to the findings of previous western studies from
Most of the children adhered to the physical activity (PA) (91.6%) and sleep duration (82.5%) guidelines; fewer children adhered to the screen time guidelines (33.7%)

Summary

Introduction

Childhood is a time of rapid physical and mental development during which time a child’s lifestyle habits are formed and changes and adaptations are made to the environment. During this period, regular and sufficient levels of physical activity are critically important for health, efforts should be made to limit screen time, and sufficient sleep duration should be ensured [1]. Previous studies have typically adopted separate approaches for investigating the lack of physical activity (PA), screen time, and insufficient sleep of preschool children, and each of these has been independently considered as a health risk factor [2]. Insufficient sleep duration is reportedly associated with an increased risk of obesity, decreased emotional regulation, decreased academic success, and degraded quality of life [7,8]

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