Blog post produced and written by Clinic Manager and Sports Injury Specialist Jason Dodd.
This week an interesting research paper popped up in our inbox with the heading we have put above. This is not directly related to injury or reduction of it. Instead it refers to something which may be even more serious in the years to come.
The paper looked at behaviour habits throughout the current Covid-19 pandemic we find ourselves in. And the results make for some interesting results. The points below summarise the paper in as short of digest as possible, but it is certainly worth reading to see what could potentially become a big issue if we find ourselves thinking ‘actually, this applies to me’.
Everything here is by no means an attempt to change or manipulate public thinking, we want to make it super clear that our aim is to share evidence based information as opposed to opinion (we could argue that the paper is based on opinion too of course but we would be missing the point of what we are trying to help highlight here). This paper relates to our general health so it holds some relevance in all that we do within clinic.
Let’s get to the point. In total, 7,753 participants took part in an online survey. The survey was designed to understand people’s behaviours during this pandemic. Without wanting to literally recite the paper word for word, the highlights of the paper do make for some very interesting reading points.
The participants average age was 51 years old and were made up of 32.2% individuals with normal weight, 32.1% classed as overweight, and 34.0% had obesity.
- During the pandemic, overall scores for healthy eating increased , owing to less eating out and increased cooking.
- Sedentary leisure behaviours increased (which include things such as watching television, using the phone for entertainment, and playing video games), while time spent in physical activity (absolute time and intensity adjusted) declined .
- Changes to sleep quality varied; 43.8% reported worsened sleep quality, while 10.2% re-ported improved sleep quality
- Anxiety scores increased during the pandemic, and the magnitude of increase was significantly greater in people with obesity.
- Weight gain was reported in 27.5% of the total sample compared with 33.4% in participants with obesity. In contrast, 17.3% of participants reported losing weight, which was consistent across all groups which is really positive.
As you can see, the title of ‘let’s not let this pandemic create another pandemic’ is hopefully justifiable. Our behaviours in some instances have changed for the better which is great, however, there are cases where in fact our behaviours are leading to other unintended outcomes where the price to pay at the end is a heavy one.As we have already said, this paper is purely here for topical discussion.
We do not want to sway your thinking, nor do we class ourselves as the righteous bearer of all Covid news. Instead, our aim is to empower and see if we can help highlight some possible problems for the future before it becomes too late.
As always, we hope you are all remaining safe and well and we wish you all the best in these tough times.
If you wish to read the paper in full please click the link here.
Yours in health forever,
Bodylogics
