Sedentary behaviour and health risk: is excessive "screen time" the real culprit?

Abstract

Excessive sedentary behaviour is associated with poor cardiometabolic health and leisure sedentary screen time may pose greater health risk than other sedentary activities. The purpose of this research was to develop a method for quantifying sedentary behaviour that combines device-measured total sedentary time and self-reported sedentary screen time to create the Index of Sedentary Screen Time (ISST). Ninety-one healthy adult volunteers (19-71 years) wore an ActivPAL4TM inclinometer and completed a screen time questionnaire for two separate weeks. Health risk was assessed using 11 different biomarkers of cardiometabolic health. Three different ISST calculation methods were tested, and all showed acceptable test-retest reliability across two weeks. The continuous ISST score was significantly associated with cardiometabolic health risk in this group of healthy adults. This exploratory study demonstrated that the ISST could be useful for identifying individuals at greater cardiometabolic health risk based on their movement behaviours.