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Expert groups

Fitness, physical activity

Project goals

Physical activity has many positive effects on human health. Nevertheless, only just under a quarter of all Germans fulfil the recommendations of the World Health Organisation (WHO) for physical activity with at least 2.5 hours per week of moderate endurance training and two hours per week of muscle training.

The expert group is responsible for a multimodal concept of various subjective and objective approaches for recording and analysing physical activity and fitness.

  • Questionnaires and a 24-hour reminder log are used to subjectively record physical activity.
  • For the objective recording of physical activity, an accelerometer is used, which is worn by the participants on the hip for a week in order to measure the acceleration of the body in all three spatial axes and thus derive the volume of physical activity.

Physical fitness includes the performance of the cardiovascular system, muscular endurance and hand grip strength. At the NAKO, muscle strength is measured using hand grip strength and cardiorespiratory fitness is measured using cycle ergometry.

First results

  • Healthcare costs: In an analysis of data from 157,648 participants in the NAKO, the researchers were able to confirm that a lack of exercise is associated with higher costs for the healthcare system. They observed a positive effect on costs through recreational sport, while high levels of physical activity at work were associated with higher costs in this study.
  • Corona pandemic: NAKO scientists surveyed around 150,000 participants in the NAKO on physical activity during the pandemic. The majority of respondents reported a significant decrease in physical activity and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, especially among people who switched to working from home.

Publications

Gottschalk S, König HH, Weber A, et al. Costs associated with insufficient physical activity in Germany: cross-sectional results from the baseline examination of the German national cohort (NAKO). Eur J Health Econ. May 2024. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-024-01697-9

Weber A, Van Hees VT, Stein MJ, et al. Large-scale assessment of physical activity in a population using high-resolution hip-worn accelerometry: the German National Cohort (NAKO). Sci Rep. 2024;14(1):7927. http://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-58461-5

Herbolsheimer F, Peters A, Wagner S, et al. Changes in physical activity and sedentary behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic- restrictions in Germany: a nationwide survey: Running head: physical activity during the COVID-19 restrictions. BMC Public Health. 2024;24(1):433. http://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-17675-y

Speakers

Dr. Hansjörg Baurecht
Dr. Florian Herbolsheimer
Prof. Dr. Karen Steindorf (Deputy Spokesperson)
PD Dr. Lilian Krist (Deputy Spokesperson)