RFSLEM LIBRARY

8 out of 10 teens world over are physically inactive: WHO

Mumbai: | Malathy.Iyer@timesgroup.com | Sat Nov 23 2019

Eight out of every 10 teenagers in the world are not as physically active as the World Health Organisation (WHO) wants them to be.

India can, though, take cold comfort in the fact that it fared slightly better as 73.9% of its teens were classified as “physically inactive” in the WHO report, published in ‘The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health’ medical journal on Friday morning.

Endocrinologist Dr Shashank Joshi from Bandra’s Lilavati Hospital said, “The study proves what we have feared for some time now that game time in playgrounds has been replaced by screen gaming for teenagers.”

The report credits India’s relatively better performance to the Indian male’s obsession with cricket and the unwritten rule of compulsory domestic chores for teenage girls. “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,” said the study, the firstever global trend for adolescent’s insufficient activity. “These two countries reported the lowest prevalence of female insufficient activity in our study, potentially explained by societal factors.”

Dr Joshi said the country’s relatively better performance doesn’t take away the fact that India is facing increasing “sedentaryism” due to increased screen time.

The study showed more girls are inactive than boys: 85% girls and 78% boys could be classified as inactive for not accumulating one hour of intense activity in a day.

It studied the changes in activity levels over 15 years. The prevalence of insufficient activity slightly decreased in boys between 2001 and 2016 (80% to 78%) but there was no change for girls (85%).

Experts, though, said India findings have failed to address the rural-urban divide. Dr Joshi said India has many layers, ranging from the rural poor who walk many kilometres to reach school to urban teens who shuttle between schools and classes. “We can’t generalize that 73.9% of our teens are inactive.”

Dr Aashish Contractor, who heads the physical rehabilitation department of Sir H N Reliance Hospital in Girgaum, said, “It would be interesting to know how WHO got Indian data. Indian big cities are very different from small cities or rural India.” He said leisure activity must be considered and not distance to schools. (The study looked at recreation, sports, chores, walking, cycling etc). A decade ago, Contractor conducted a study that showed 40-50% students aged 12-15 didn’t manage 10,000 steps a day.

Source : https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/