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Time spent outdoors, activity levels, and chronic disease among American adults

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Abstract

Chronic diseases—including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic conditions such as diabetes and obesity—account for over 60% of overall global mortality. Sedentary time increases the risk for chronic disease incidence and mortality, while moderate to vigorous physical activity is known to decrease risk. Most Americans spend at least half of their time sedentary, with a trend toward increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and few Americans achieve recommended levels of physical activity. Time spent outdoors has been associated with reduced sedentary time and increased physical activity among children/youth and the elderly, but few population-based studies have examined this relationship among working age adults who may face greater constraints on active, outdoor time. This study examines the relationship between time spent outdoors, activity levels, and several chronic health conditions among a population-based sample of working age American adults in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for 2009–2012. Findings provide evidence that time spent outdoors, on both work days and non-work days, is associated with less time spent sedentary and more time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity. Further, findings indicate that time spent outdoors is associated with lower chronic disease risk; while these associations are partially explained by activity levels, controlling for activity levels does not fully attenuate the relationship between time outdoors and chronic disease risk. While cross-sectional, study findings support the notion that increasing time spent outdoors could result in more active lifestyles and lower chronic disease risk. Future work should examine this relationship longitudinally to determine a causal direction. Additional work is also needed to identify mechanisms beyond physical activity, such as psychosocial stress, that could contribute to explaining the relationship between time spent outdoors and chronic disease risk.

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Acknowledgments

The analyses were exempted by the Institutional Review Board at the Medical College of Wisconsin due to the use of public access data. This work is supported in part by the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment and in part by the Clinical & Translational Science Institute of Southeast Wisconsin: NIH UL1RR031973.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Epidemiology, Institute for Health and Equity, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Road, P.O. Box 26509, Milwaukee, WI, 53226-0509, USA

    Kirsten M. M. Beyer & Kelly Hoormann

  2. Division of Biostatistics, Institute for Health and Equity, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Road, P.O. Box 26509, Milwaukee, WI, 53226-0509, USA

    Aniko Szabo

  3. Department of Medicine, Cancer Center, and Center for Patient Care and Outcomes Research, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Road, P.O. Box 26509, Milwaukee, WI, 53226-0509, USA

    Melinda Stolley

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  1. Kirsten M. M. Beyer
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Correspondence to Kirsten M. M. Beyer.

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Dr. Kirsten M. M. Beyer, Dr. Aniko Szabo, Ms. Kelly Hoormann and Dr. Melinda Stolley declares that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Beyer, K.M.M., Szabo, A., Hoormann, K. et al. Time spent outdoors, activity levels, and chronic disease among American adults. J Behav Med 41, 494–503 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-018-9911-1

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