{"id":356309,"date":"2019-11-22T18:00:39","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=356309"},"modified":"2019-11-22T11:43:54","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T09:43:54","slug":"south-african-teens-are-not-getting-enough-exercise-and-could-be-some-of-the-laziest-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/356309\/south-african-teens-are-not-getting-enough-exercise-and-could-be-some-of-the-laziest-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"South African teens are not getting enough exercise – and could be some of the laziest in the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new Lancet study<\/a><\/strong> on teen health, published in the Lancet journal, has found that the majority of adolescents across the globe do not meet current physical activity guidelines.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched More Active People for a Healthier World, a new global action on physical activity, including new targets of a 15% relative reduction of global prevalence of insufficient physical activity by 2030 among adolescents and adults.<\/p>\n

The Lancet paper, which is based on 1.6 million school-going adolescents, is the first to estimate levels of insufficient physical activity across 146 countries and to assess global, regional, and country time trends in insufficient physical activity.<\/p>\n

The study shows that globally, in 2016, more than 80% of school-going adolescents aged 11\u201317 years did not meet current recommendations for daily physical activity, compromising their current and future health.<\/p>\n

“Although there appear to have been small reductions in insufficient activity among boys, prevalence of insufficient physical activity in girls has remained unchanged since 2001, leading to widening sex differences,” the researchers said.<\/p>\n

“Urgent action is needed now, particularly through targeted interventions to promote and retain girls’ participation in physical activity.”<\/p>\n

The research found that, unlike in adults, the prevalence of insufficient activity in school-going adolescents did not increase with country income. On the contrary, male adolescents from high-income countries showed the lowest prevalence of insufficient activity, whereas those from low-income countries showed the highest prevalence.<\/p>\n

However, this was not the case for girls, where no pattern was found with regards to country income.<\/p>\n

The highest levels of insufficient activity in boys was found in high-income Asia Pacific. Sub-Saharan Africa was the region with the second highest prevalence of insufficient activity among boys, with particularly high prevalence values in Sudan and Zambia.<\/p>\n

Some of the lowest levels of insufficient activity in boys were found in high-income western countries and south Asia, driven by countries with large populations like the USA, Bangladesh, and India.<\/p>\n

The quite low prevalence of insufficient activity in boys in Bangladesh and India might be explained by the strong focus on national sports, such as cricket, which is frequently played unstructured in local communities, the researchers said.<\/p>\n

For adolescent females, the high-income Asia Pacific region showed the highest levels of insufficient activity, largely driven by South Korea. The region with the lowest levels of insufficient activity in 2016 in girls was south Asia, which includes Bangladesh and India.<\/p>\n

South Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Africa was not included in the 146 countries assessed by the WHO study, but local research shows that South African children and teens fall within the general findings of the paper, and could even be considered some of the laziest in the world.<\/p>\n

A 2019 study conducted by BMC Pediatrics<\/a><\/strong> assessed the physical activity of 1,410 South African teens aged 12 to 17 in terms of the WHO’s guidelines.<\/p>\n

In line with The Lancet’s latest study, it was found that the large majority of males (82%) and all females (100%) failed to meet the World Health Organisation physical activity recommendation for adolescents of 60\u2009min of moderate-vigorous intensity physical activity per day.<\/p>\n

As an average, at around 90%, this places South African teens as possibly the fourth-worst in globally, behind South Korea (94.2%), Phillipines (93.4%), and Cambodia (91.6%). The BMC and Lancet studies had different methodologies, so that is not a conclusive position, however.<\/p>\n

In the BMC study, participants were assessed on four main patterns<\/a><\/strong> of activity – informal physical activity, physical education at at school, organised sport activity, and walking to\/from school.<\/p>\n

As participants got older, the amount of self-reported physical activity decreased in most patterns, while time spent on sedentary behaviours increased.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lancet study, meanwhile, estimated the prevalence of insufficient physical activity in school-going adolescents based on pooled analysis of cross-sectional survey data from random samples of at least 100 people.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Discovery is introducing new \u2018health coaches\u2019 for members on its medical aid<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new Lancet study on teen health, published in the Lancet journal, has found that the majority of adolescents across the globe do not meet current physical activity guidelines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":356381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-356309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356309"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356383,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356309\/revisions\/356383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}