Effect of physical and mental activity on blood pressure

The authors measured and recorded the physical (outdoor playing) and mental (home study) activity behavior and blood pressure amongst school going children and observed their association with the blood pressure levels.

It was a cross sectional school-based study from 12 primary schools; selected by stratified random sampling. Participants included 2250 children aged 10 years and above. Explanatory variables were age, sex, outdoor playing (hours/ day) and home-study (hours/ day). Outcome variables were mean and standard deviation (SD) of systolic and diastolic blood pressures in various activity groups. Statistical tools used were proportions, correlation co-efficient (r), coefficient of determination (r2) and Regression analysis.

47.8% boys and 2.5 % girls were engaged in outdoor playing for more than two hours. No trend was observed for systolic blood pressure (SBP) in both the sexes in various activity groups of outdoor playing. Both mean diagnostic blood pressure (DBP) and mean BMI showed decreasing trend in boys. Mean BMI had an inverse relationship with outdoor playing in girls. Correlation of age and weight with both SBP and DBP was highly significant in both the sexes and in all the age groups except that of the 15-year age. Both SBP and DBP were not associated with home study in all sex and age groups except the age group of 10 and 12 years. Both SBP and DBP were significantly associated with the outdoor playing taking the whole sample as one group, but not in different sex or age groups; except that the SBP was significantly correlated with outdoor playing in 10 to 13 years age groups in boys.

Boys spent twice the time in outdoor playing than girls. They were spending more time on outdoor playing than on home study. Conversely girls spent more time in home study. A weak negative correlation was observed between outdoor playing and blood pressures. Less time spent in physical activities by the girls may have contributed to their higher BMI. They need behavior change communication for involvement in physical activities.