Background: The health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is the perceived quality of individual’s physical, mental, and social well-being and is a strong predictor of health status. Few studies have investigated associations of sedentary behavior (SB) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) with HRQOL. The purpose of this study was to determine combined associations of objectively-measured SB and MVPA with the risk of poor HRQOL in the general US adults.
Methods: In this study, study participants included 5,359 adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2006. HRQOL was measured using a CDC HRQOL-4 consisting of four questions of general health, physical health, mental health, and activity limitation. Each HRQOL-4 components were dichotomized as good and poor. We also defined poor overall HRQOL when participants had any poor HRQOL components. SB and MVPA were measured using a uniaxial accelerometer. We estimated the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for poor HRQOL by SB and MVPA as tertiles using survey logistic models, after controlling for potential confounding factors.
Results: When examined as a combination of SB and MVPA, we observed a substantial decrease in the risk of poor overall HRQOL in participants with low SB/high MVPA (OR: 0.69 (95% CI: 0.51-0.94) and moderate SB/high MVPA (OR: 0.56 (95% CI: 0.40-0.78)), but no significant decrease was found in participants with high SB/high MVPA compared to those with high SB/low MVPA.
Conclusions: We found that high MVPA may have a more favorable effect on poor HRQOL, while prolonged SB may play a role in weaken the effect of high MVPA on HRQOL. Our findings suggest that both increasing MVPA and reducing time spent in SB may be useful strategies to improve HRQOL.