Is sitting the new ‘smoking’ even for children?

 Written by  DevdeepAhuja

Sitting in front of your laptop, driving long distances, relaxing in front of a television – the modern lifestyle is geared to promote sitting. "Up until very recently, if you exercised for 60 minutes or more a day, you were considered physically active, case closed," Bur now a consistent body of emerging research suggests it is entirely possible to meet current physical activity guidelines while still being incredibly sedentary, and that sitting increases your risk of death and disease, even if you are getting plenty of physical activity. But is it the same for children as well. We assume children to be running around, playing in the ground and being active most of the time. But the fact is the rise of playstation and other gaming consoles have had children stuck in front of tube for long periods of time. So what impact does sitting have on children? Do the children who remain in seated postures for longer duration tend to have greater musculoskeletal problems?

Brink and Louw (2013) undertook a systematic review to evaluate whether there is an association between sitting and upper quadrant musculoskeletal problems (UQMP) for children and what elements of sitting might be related to UMPQ. The reviewer undertook a search of six electronic databases (BioMed Central, CINAHL, PROQUEST, PUBMED, SCIENCE DIRECT and SCOPUS) for papers published between January 2007 and December 2011. Combinations of the following keywords were used: pain, neck and/or shoulder pain, musculoskeletal pain, upper limb pain, upper extremity pain, posture, sitting posture, children, adolescents, learner and student.

Prospective or cross sectional English languages studies reporting on the sitting of male and female children between the ages of six and 12 years and adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 years were included in the review. The included studies measured UQMP in terms of the onset, area, frequency, intensity or duration of pain as an outcome measure.

The methodological quality was assessed by one reviewer and audited by another reviewer and differences were settled through discussion. This method of quality assessment seems to be fraught with challenges as not all papers were quality assessed by second reviewer. If there are discrepancies between the papers audited, there is a great likelihood of further discrepancies in the papers which were quality assessed only by one author. This is likely to reduce the confidence in findings. The authors also did not describe a cut off point to describe ‘high quality’ and ‘low quality’ papers.

Ten papers were eligible for the review. Four papers reported significant positive associations between sitting and UQMP in children and adolescents. Five elements of sitting were identified as relating to UQMP. Those were sitting duration; activities while sitting; activities while sitting and sitting duration; dynamism; and postural angles.

Thus the authors concluded that sitting and UQMP are related in children and adolescents. So as much as you need to get up and start some form of physical activity, it is also important to get children and adolescents get into the habit of physical activity to stay fit and keep UQMP at bay.

Reference: Brink Y, Louw Q. A systematic review of the relationship between sitting and upper quadrant musculoskeletal pain in children and adolescents. Manual Therapy 18 (2013) 281e288