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The Association of the Body Composition of Children with 24-Hour Activity Composition
Dorothea Dumuid1, Melissa Wake2, Susan Clifford3
1Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (ARENA), University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Insights
Decreasing moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) negatively impacts children's body composition more than increasing it benefits. Maintaining MVPA is crucial for healthy development.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Health
- Body Composition Research
- Physical Activity Science
Background:
- Childhood obesity is a growing concern, with body composition significantly influenced by physical activity levels.
- Understanding how time allocation across different activities affects body composition is vital for public health interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between reallocating time among sleep, sedentary behavior, light, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and children's body composition.
- To quantify the impact of shifting minutes between these activities on truncal fat, non-truncal fat, and fat-free mass.
Main Methods:
- Utilized data from 938 Australian children aged 11-12 years from the Child Health CheckPoint study.
- Measured 24-hour activity composition using accelerometry and 3-part body composition (truncal fat, non-truncal fat, fat-free mass) via bioelectrical impedance analysis.
- Employed dual-compositional regression models, adjusting for covariates, to analyze time reallocations and their association with body composition metrics.
Main Results:
- Significant associations were found between MVPA time reallocations and body composition changes.
- A decrease of 15 minutes in MVPA was linked to adverse changes, including increased truncal and non-truncal fat and decreased fat-free mass.
- Conversely, a 15-minute increase in MVPA showed beneficial effects, reducing truncal and non-truncal fat and increasing fat-free mass, though the adverse effects of MVPA reduction were more pronounced.
- Reallocations involving sleep, sedentary time, and light physical activity did not show significant associations with body composition.
Conclusions:
- Prioritizing MVPA over other activities appears beneficial for children's body composition.
- Interventions aimed at preventing reductions in MVPA, particularly during periods of inactivity like holidays, may be a key strategy for improving pediatric body composition.
Objectives:
To evaluate how the reallocation of time between sleep, sedentary time, light, and moderate-vigorous activities is associated with children's body composition.
Study Design:
Population-based cross-sectional Child Health CheckPoint within the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 938 11-12 year-olds, 50% boys). Twenty-four hour activity composition via accelerometry (minutes/day of sleep, sedentary time, light, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity [MVPA]) and 3-part body composition (percentage truncal fat, percentage nontruncal fat, and percentage fat-free mass) via bioelectrical impedance analysis were measured. We estimated differences in 3-part body composition associated with the incremental reallocation of time between activities, using dual-compositional regression models adjusted for sex, age, puberty, and socioeconomic position.
Results:
Reallocation of time between MVPA and any other activity was strongly associated with differences in body composition. Adverse body composition differences were larger for a given MVPA decrease than were the beneficial differences for an equivalent MVPA increase. For example, 15 minutes less MVPA (relative to remaining activities) was associated with absolute percentage differences of +1.7% (95% CI 1.2; 2.4) for truncal fat, +0.8% (0.6; 1.2) for nontruncal fat, and -2.6% (-3.5; -1.9) for fat-free mass, and a 15-minute increase was associated with -0.7% (-0.9; -0.5) truncal fat, -0.4% (-0.5; -0.3) nontruncal fat, and +1.1% (0.9; 1.5) fat-free mass. Reallocations between sleep, sedentary time, and light physical activity were not associated with differences in body composition.
Conclusions:
Preventing declines in MVPA during inactive periods (eg, holidays) may be an important intervention goal. More MVPA, instead of other activities, may benefit body composition.
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