Physical Activity -- Not Just A 'Walk In The Park'

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 12 Jun 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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People with more green space in their living environment walk and cycle less often and for shorter amounts of time, according to new research published in the open access journal BMC Public Health.

About five thousand Dutch residents were surveyed in the study which involved completing a questionnaire. Questions focused on participants' physical activity and self perceived health. The percentage of green space within a 1 km and 3 km radius around their house was calculated for each resident.

"Little is known about the way in which green space exerts a beneficial effect. Several explanations are possible" explained Jolanda Maas, who led the research. "In this study we investigate whether a green living environment encourages people to undertake physical activity. We found there was no or a negative relationship between the amount of green space in people's environment and whether they played sports, walked or cycled for leisure."

Maas and her team discovered, that while walking and cycling is favoured by the largest part of the population, there was a negative relationship between the amount of green space and levels of walking or cycling for leisure. In other words people living near to green spaces walked less often, probably as their shops and facilities were further away so they relied more heavily on the use of their car. Apparently closeness of destinations is more important for walking and cycling during leisure time in the Netherlands than availability of green space.

"We found that physical activity is not a likely cause behind the apparent relationship between green space and health. If people don't live near green space they may seek alternative places to exercise. In the future, we need to look at where it is people choose to exercise to understand this more clearly. People's perception of their green space may motivate their behaviour more than the availability of green space itself. What is clear is that the amount people exercise is not related to the amount of green space they live near" concluded Maas.

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Notes:

• 1. Physical activity as a possible mechanism behind the relationship between green space and health: a multilevel analysis
  Jolanda Maas, Robert A Verheij, Peter Spreeuwenberg and Peter P Groenewegen
  BMC Public Health (in press)
  Article available at the journal website: http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcpublichealth/
  All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.
  
  
• 2. The health data was provided by the Second Dutch National Survey of General Practice in 2001.
  
  
• 3. Environmental data was provided by the National Land Cover Classification database
  
  
• 4. Participants self rated their general health in questionnaires and interviews answering questions on commuting physical activities, occupational physical activity, household activity, leisure time activity. One leisure time physical activity was analysed, however.
  
  
• 5. 4899 Dutch people participated in the study.
  
  
• 6. BMC Public Health is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in all aspects of epidemiology and public health medicine. BMC Public Health (ISSN 1471-2458) is indexed/tracked/covered by PubMed, MEDLINE, CAS, Scopus, EMBASE, Thomson Scientific (ISI) and Google Scholar.
  
  
• 7. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science.

Source: Charlotte Webber
BioMed Central