Sedentary Time

The management of a person with obesity involves long-term behavioral changes with a balanced diet in both quantity and quality, along with the adoption of a more active lifestyle: increasing physical activities and reducing sedentary behaviors. The school setting has been identified as a favorable environment for interventions aimed at reducing and interrupting the time adolescents spend sitting and preventing the associated negative health consequences. Recently, very short (\< 1 minute) and intense exercises, called 'exercise-snacks,' have been reported to be effective in adults for 1) improving physical fitness over 6 weeks, and 2) improving vascular function and lowering blood glucose levels over a single day. Additionally, in adolescents with diabetes, they have been shown to reduce body fat. This raises the question of whether adding \'exercise-snack\' sessions to a multidimensional care program for hospitalized obese adolescents could further improve their physical fitness in the short and medium term. The objective of this project is to compare the effects of a traditional multidimensional care program with the addition of 'exercise-snacks' to the same care program without \'exercise-snacks\' on the physical fitness, body composition, vascular function, and physical activity and sedentary behaviors of obese children in the short and medium term. Forty-eight obese adolescents will be included. The \'exercise-snack\' group will perform six exercise sessions per day for three weeks in addition to the standard care. The control group will receive only the standard care. Assessments of physical fitness, body composition, vascular health, and questionnaires on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and cognitive restraint will be conducted at the beginning and end of the three-week program, as well as 1 and 3 months after the end of the program.

Although empirical research suggests that physical activity interventions benefit cognition and sleep in older adults in general, the possible benefit of physical activity is understudied in low-income older adults. The study aims to test the immediate and sustaining efficacy of an mHealth-facilitated Physical Activity Toward Health (mPATH) intervention on cognitive function and sleep in low-income older adults.

There is strong evidence for the association between sedentary behaviors and cardiovascular diseases such as coronary heart disease and stroke. However, the public currently has no clear guidance on how to limit or interrupt their sedentary behaviors. This study will identify and test the physiological effects of several sedentary behavior interruption strategies and explore the feasibility (i.e., likelihood of an individual performing the requested activities) of those strategies to inform the development of public policy surrounding sedentary behavior interruption. Long-term, the findings of this study will inform a large clinical trial that can test whether sedentary behavior reduction can decrease cardiovascular disease risk.

The purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility, acceptability, efficacy, and participant adherence in using home-based technologies and wearable devices and simple, practical strategies to reduce the negative impact that evening screen time may have on your health.