Anthropometric parameters and occupational sedentary lifestyle among workers of a higher education institution

Introduction: A sedentary lifestyle has taken on a very real world dimension, posing a serious problem in terms of public health, especially in North America and Europe. Unfortunately, edentary behaviour has progressively increased over the past few decades, leading to a significant increase in the risk of chronic noncommunicable diseases - type 2 diabetes mellitus, cancer, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, overweight and obesity.

Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the relationship between body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), body fat percentage (BF%) and skeletal muscle mass (SMM) and the occupational sedentarism in workers of a higher education institution.

Methods: Data on age, sex, BF%, WC, SMM and BMI were collected from a sample of 59 adult men and women between December 2017 and January 2018, working full time. The Occupational Sitting and Physical Activity Questionnaire (OSPAQ) was applied and calculated the score for each domain. To study the correlation between the occupational sitting and antropometric data, the information was analysed with SPSS Statistics.

Results: In the present study, 39 of the individuals were females and 20 males, aged between 31-62 years. As a reference to the work day, we observed sitting times with an average of 335.19 ± 116.07 minutes; half of the subjects worked sitting at least 336 minutes. Non-teachers showed a greater sedentary lifestyle in their occupational activity and teachers showed greater SMM and lower BF%. Spearman’s correlation revealed that there was no association between occupational sitting and anthropometric parameters (p > 0.05).

Conclusions: Although there was no statistically significant association between sedentary work and anthropometric data, it was possible to observe a tendency for workers with a higher occupational sedentary lifestyle to show worse anthropometric parameters. Taking these data into account, it’s urgent to adopt measures to promote a healthy work environment.