Abstract
BackgroundRegular physical activity decreases the risk for numerous non-communicable diseases. The World Health Organization has suggested physical activity (PA) guidelines that, based on previous research, would provide health benefits to those who comply. The first guideline for health benefits suggests 150 min of moderate PA or equivalent per week. The guideline for additional health benefits suggests 300 min of PA or equivalent per week. The objective of this paper is to analyze to what extent these two WHO PA guidelines for adults are met in the Belgian region of Flanders. Furthermore, we are interested to see which groups are more or less likely to meet the PA guidelines.MethodsCrosstables and logistic regressions are used on a sample of 3028 adults in the Belgian region of Flanders. All respondents filled in a 7-day time-diary in which they continuously recorded all their activities.ResultsFirstly, men are more likely than women to comply to both PA guidelines. Secondly, living with a partner increases the odds to comply to the guidelines. For men, this is the case for both guidelines, while for women, this only applies to the first guideline. Thirdly, women with a young child have lower odds to comply to the guidelines, while having a young child doesn’t have an effect for men.ConclusionPrevious research on meeting PA guidelines in Flanders shows diverging results. Time-diary data allows researchers to strictly follow the WHO definition when operationalizing compliance to PA guidelines. There is a need for future research that combines time-diaries with a PA questionnaire and accelerometer data to gain more insights on the benefits and pitfalls of both methodologies.
Highlights
Regular physical activity decreases the risk for numerous non-communicable diseases
A slightly higher percentage of men (83.3%) than women (79.9%) complies to this guideline. This implies that 16.7% of the men and 20.1% of the women do not perform enough physical activity to meet the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline for health benefits
Compared to previous research in the Belgian region of Flanders, the results of this paper show a higher compliance to the WHO physical activity (PA) guideline of 150 min of moderate PA or 75 min of vigorous PA or equivalent
Summary
Regular physical activity decreases the risk for numerous non-communicable diseases. The World Health Organization has suggested physical activity (PA) guidelines that, based on previous research, would provide health benefits to those who comply. Regular physical activity decreases risk of diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, hypertension, colon cancer, breast cancer and depression and more non-communicable diseases and health conditions [1,2,3,4,5,6]. In response to this awareness of the importance of physical activity, the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued global recommendations on physical activity for health [1]. The WHO recommends that adults aged 18– 64 should do “at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week, or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity” ( “Guideline of 150 min MPA”) to decrease the risk of non-communicable diseases and depression and to improve muscular and cardiopulmonary fitness [1]
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