What We Really Do All Day by Jonathan Gershuny

Author:Jonathan Gershuny
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141984551
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Time and Physical Activity

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Jonathan Gershuny

Teresa Harms

We know that the way we spend our time contributes substantially to our health. The previous chapter looked at the timing and context of eating; in this chapter we look at the physiological value of the physical activity involved in our daily lives. Everything we do has some potential physiological impact, positive or negative. Health authorities tell us that moderate to vigorous levels of physical activity have beneficial effects, and the ‘couch-potato’ lifestyle has negative ones. However, while some physical activity is evidently a good thing, the exact effect of different levels of activity is hard to establish. Public health advice in this area is predominantly based on measures constructed from answers to survey questions about participation in physical exercise that are not always easy to answer.

Time-use evidence can play an important role here, by providing us with accurate estimates of individual – and population – daily activities. By combining this information with estimates derived from medical research on metabolic processes (so-called metabolic equivalence scores, or METs), we are able to show how different totals of daily activity are associated with different personal energy expenditures. We show in this chapter how these daily totals of energy expenditure vary with demographic characteristics such as age and sex, employment status and educational level. Then we assess the extent to which physical activity (and the resulting energy expenditure) is related to health and wellbeing. And finally, we estimate the exercise-related balance of activities through the day and across the population. Emerging from this discussion is a challenge to the science that underlies much of the current public health advice on physical activity.

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