Sedentary lifestyle and headaches in schoolchildren

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the prevalence of sedentary lifestyle, i.e. insufficient physical activity in schoolchildren, and theassociationof sedentary lifestyle and headache. We used Croatian database of the international research on Health Behaviour ofSchool-aged Children, 2013/2014. For the purpose of this paper, we used questions that describe sedentary lifestyle and headaches.Statistical processing was done using IBM SPSS Statistics 24.0 statistical program. The sample included 5741 students (49.8% F and50.2% M), primary school 5th and 7th grades and secondary school 1st grade (age 11, 13 and 15 years, respectively), with an equaldistribution. The response rate was 85.9%. Study results showed that 25.3% of students practiced daily physical activity. Spendingtwo hours of free time in front of screens daily was reported by 23.9% of respondents. One-fifth of the students answered that theyplayed games for about half an hour a day. Children who were more physically active had less headaches (OR 0.0905, p<0.001).More time spent in front of a screen was associated with more frequent headaches (OR 1.082, p<0.003), and playing games longerwas associated with less headaches (OR 0.890, p<0.001). Analyzing the relationship between sedentary lifestyle and headachesindicatedphysical activity and playing games as a protective factor, whereas the time spent in front of a screen was a risk factor.Key words: CHILD; SEDENTARY BEHAVIOR; EXERCISE; SCREEN TIME; VIDEO GAMES