Sedentary behaviour in older adults: investigating a new therapeutic paradigm

老年与许多疾病、身体机能差和虚弱、认知能力下降和其他形式残疾的风险增加有关。此外，南亚人等一些群体的发病率更高。研究表明，高水平的体育锻炼可以改善许多这些因素。然而，人们对久坐行为的作用知之甚少，即老年人坐着的时间。一些研究已经开始表明，减少坐着的时间可以降低患许多疾病的风险，并改善功能健康。这项研究表明，只要帮助人们将坐着的时间换成站着的时间或轻强度的步行，就可以改善健康状况。老年人每天大约有70%的时间是坐着的，但目前对减少坐着的时间是否能促进老年人的健康和幸福知之甚少。这可能与老年人特别相关，因为他们害怕跌倒、关节疼痛、身体功能下降和其他禁忌症可能会限制他们从事有目的运动的动力和能力。因此，这笔拨款将侧重于调查老年人久坐的影响。这项研究的结果将为未来旨在减少久坐时间的更大规模研究和公共卫生倡议提供信息。我们的研究计划包括三个工作包。在工作包一中，我们将开发一种估算老年人坐着和体育活动时间的方法，这种方法以前从未在老年人中做过。实验将在实验室进行参与者将完成一系列活动我们将测量这些活动的强度。这一揽子工作的另一部分是利用作为英格兰健康调查的一部分收集的现有数据。我们将重新分析这些数据，以调查老年人坐着和体育活动的时间和频率（例如，早上，下午，晚上，一天中的次数和每次多长时间），并将其与其他年龄组进行比较。我们还将研究久坐和体育活动与老年人健康和幸福之间的关系。这些数据将补充我们在本部门收集的大量多民族老年人的数据。工作包二将开发一种测量坐着时间的新方法，使研究人员能够捕捉老年人在家中或汽车环境中度过时间的位置，并更准确地测量坐着时间。这将涉及一种手腕佩戴的设备，它带有非常小的标签，可以附着在物体上（如椅子、桌子、电脑等）。然后，我们可以结合这两个设备的信息来测量坐着的时间，以及坐着行为的类型和家庭周围的位置（例如，客厅的沙发，办公室的电脑，餐桌等）。这将有助于研究人员找到帮助人们减少久坐时间的方法。这种新方法将在实验室进行测试，也将要求一小部分人在日常生活中进行测试。一旦他们这样做了，我们就会询问他们对久坐行为的看法以及这些测量久坐的新方法的反馈。工作包三将是一项实验室研究，调查整天坐着的影响（条件一），每30分钟站几分钟来减少坐着的影响（条件二），每30分钟慢慢走几分钟来减少坐着的影响（条件三）。参与者将进入实验室，并在一天（上午8点至下午5点）内完成这些条件。在这些条件下，血糖、胰岛素、血液中的脂肪、情绪和认知功能将被测量。这项工作将调查久坐对健康的危害，以及是否可以通过站着或轻走或两者兼而有之来减少久坐时间来改善健康。

Older age is associated with an increased risk of many diseases, poor physical function and frailty, cognitive decline and other forms of disability. Also, some groups such as South Asians have higher rate of disease. Research has shown that many of these factors are improved by higher levels of physical activity. However, little is known about the role of sedentary behaviour i.e., sitting time in older adults. Some research has started to show that reducing the time that you spend sitting can reduce the risk of many diseases and improve functional health. This research suggests that improvements in health may be gained by simply helping people to swop time spent sitting with time spent standing or in light-intensity walking. Older adults spend around 70% of their day sitting but little is currently known about whether reducing sitting time promotes health and wellbeing in older adults. This may be particularly relevant to older adults where fear of falls, joint pain, decreased physical function and other contraindications may limit motivation and ability to engage in much purposeful exercise. This grant is therefore going to focus on investigating the impact of sitting in older adults. The results of this research will inform larger studies and public health initiatives aimed at reducing sitting time in the future.Our research plan includes three work packages. In work package one, we will develop a method of estimating time spent sitting and in physical activity which hasn't been done before in older adults. This will be done in a laboratory where participants will complete a set of activities and we will measure the intensity of these activities. Another part of this work package is to use existing data that has been collected as part of the Health Survey for England. We will re-analyse this data to investigate how much sitting and physical activity older adults do, when and how often they do these behaviours (e.g., morning ,afternoon, evening, numbers of times in the day and how long for each time), and compare this to other age groups. We will also look at the relationship between sitting and physical activity with health and wellbeing in older adults. This data will be supplemented with data that we have collected within our department in a large population of older multi-ethnic adults. Work package two will develop a novel way of measuring sitting time which allows researchers to capture the location of where older adults spend the their time around the home/car environment and more accurately measure sitting time. This will involve a wrist worn device along with very small tags that can be attached to objects (such as chairs, tables, computers etc). We can then combine the information from both devices to measure time spent sitting but also the type of sitting behaviour and the location around the home (e.g., sofa in living room, computer in office, dining table etc). This will help researchers to develop ways to help people to reduce their sitting time. This novel method will be tested in a laboratory and also a small number of people will be asked to test it in their daily lives. Once they have done this we will ask them for feedback on perceptions of sedentary behaviour and these novel method of measuring sitting. Work package three will be a laboratory study to investigate the impact of sitting down all day (condition one), reducing sitting by standing every 30 minutes for a few minutes (condition two) and reducing sitting by slowly walking every 30 minutes for a few minutes (condition three). Participants will come into the laboratory and perform each of these conditions over a day (8am-5pm). During these conditions blood sugar, insulin, fats in the blood, mood and cognitive function will be measured. This work package will investigate how harmful sitting is for health and whether health can be improved by reducing sitting time either by standing or light walking or both.