Substituting device-measured sedentary time with alternative 24-hour movement behaviours: compositional associations with adiposity and cardiometabolic risk in the ORISCAV-LUX 2 study

Abstract

Background: There is a considerable burden of sedentary time in European adults. We aimed to quantify the differences in adiposity and cardiometabolic health associated with theoretically exchanging sedentary time for alternative 24 h movement behaviours.

Methods: This observational cross-sectional study included Luxembourg residents aged 18-79 years who each provided ≥ 4 valid days of triaxial accelerometry (n = 1046). Covariable adjusted compositional isotemporal substitution models were used to examine if statistically replacing device-measured sedentary time with more time in the sleep period, light physical activity (PA), or moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) was associated with adiposity and cardiometabolic health markers. We further investigated the cardiometabolic properties of replacing sedentary time which was accumulated in prolonged (≥ 30 min) with non-prolonged (< 30 min) bouts.

Results: Replacing sedentary time with MVPA was favourably associated with adiposity, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, fasting glucose, insulin, and clustered cardiometabolic risk. Substituting sedentary time with light PA was associated with lower total body fat, fasting insulin, and was the only time-exchange to predict lower triglycerides and a lower apolipoprotein B/A1 ratio. Exchanging sedentary time with more time in the sleep period was associated with lower fasting insulin, and with lower adiposity in short sleepers. There was no significant evidence that replacing prolonged with non-prolonged sedentary time was related to outcomes.

Conclusions: Artificial time-use substitutions indicate that replacing sedentary time with MVPA is beneficially associated with the widest range of cardiometabolic risk factors. Light PA confers some additional and unique metabolic benefit. Extending sleep, by substituting sedentary time with more time in the sleep period, may lower obesity risk in short sleepers.

Keywords: Inactivity; Metabolic syndrome; Obesity; Physical activity; Sleep.

Fig. 1

The estimated differences in waist circumference and total body fat associated with incremental one-to-one reallocations of sedentary time to alternative movement behaviours, stratified by sleep period tertiles. The data are β-coefficients adjusted for model A covariables (sex, age, education level, season of measurement, smoking status, general health, medication use, family history of disease) and represent the expected difference in outcomes when reallocating sedentary time to another behavior, keeping all other movement behaviours constant at the compositional mean. Asterisks indicate statistically significant associations (p < 0.05). Full results, including data further adjusted for model B and C covariables, are presented in Additional file 1: Table S1