COVID changed our lives in a lot of ways, including our healthy habits. We spent a lot of time sitting at home during the peak of the pandemic, so our daily step counts were a lot lower. And a new study suggests they’re still not back up now.
For the study, researchers looked at steps taken by nearly 55-hundred participants wearing activity trackers - who were mostly white women with an average age of 53.
- They tracked participants’ daily steps over four years from January 2018 through December 2021, counting everything before January 31st, 2020 as pre-COVID and everything after that date as post-COVID.
- Researchers also used data from 6-thousand participants in the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, who wore fitness trackers for at least 10 hours a day for multiple years.
- And they found that on average, people are taking around 600 fewer steps a day than they did before the start of the pandemic.
- The research shows that the pandemic didn’t affect the step counts of people over 60, but it did for younger people. Surprisingly, the study finds that those between the ages of 18 and 20 were most affected.
“If this persists over time, it could certainly raise the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, hypertension, diabetes and other conditions strongly linked to being sedentary,” study author Dr. Evan Brittain explains. “However, it’s too soon to know whether this trend will last.”
Source: NY Post
Scott's Thoughts:
- But so many people said they were exercising more during the pandemic!
- I definitely was walking more DURING the pandemic. Working at home gave me that freedom.
- I was getting 8 to 10k a day during the pandemic. I rarely see 8K now.