Reallocating just 10 min to moderate-to-vigorous physical activity from other components of 24-hour movement behaviors improves cardiovascular health in adults

Abstract

Background

As components of a 24-hour day, sedentary behavior (SB), physical activity (PA), and sleep are all independently linked to cardiovascular health (CVH). However, insufficient understanding of components’ mutual exclusion limits the exploration of the associations between all movement behaviors and health outcomes. The aim of this study was to employ compositional data analysis (CoDA) approach to investigate the associations between 24-hour movement behaviors and overall CVH.

Methods

Data from 581 participants, including 230 women, were collected from the 2005–2006 wave of the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). This dataset included information on the duration of SB and PA, derived from ActiGraph accelerometers, as well as self-reported sleep duration. The assessment of CVH was conducted in accordance with the criteria outlined in Life’s Simple 7, encompassing the evaluation of both health behaviors and health factors. Compositional linear regression was utilized to examine the cross-sectional associations of 24-hour movement behaviors and each component with CVH score. Furthermore, the study predicted the potential differences in CVH score that would occur by reallocating 10 to 60 min among different movement behaviors.

Results

A significant association was observed between 24-hour movement behaviors and overall CVH ( p < 0.001) after adjusting for potential confounders. Substituting moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) for other components was strongly associated with favorable differences in CVH score ( p < 0.05), whether in one-for-one reallocations or one-for-remaining reallocations. Allocating time away from MVPA consistently resulted in larger negative differences in CVH score ( p < 0.05). For instance, replacing 10 min of light physical activity (LPA) with MVPA was related to an increase of 0.21 in CVH score (95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.11 to 0.31). Conversely, when the same duration of MVPA was replaced with LPA, CVH score decreased by 0.67 (95% CI -0.99 to -0.35). No such significance was discovered for all duration reallocations involving only LPA, SB, and sleep ( p > 0.05).

Conclusions

MVPA seems to be as a pivotal determinant for enhancing CVH among general adult population, relative to other movement behaviors. Consequently, optimization of MVPA duration is an essential element in promoting overall health and well-being.