Accelerometer measured movement behavior and sleeping pattern in semi urban areas of Nepal

Background: National data shows that 7% of people in Nepal are insufficiently active, while the rate is 43.1% for individuals in semi-urban areas. These individuals engage in less leisure-time physical activity (PA) and exhibit high levels of sedentary behaviour, despite moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) being beneficial for health. The true extent of insufficient PA might be higher due to potential under-reporting in the subjective assessments used in these surveys.

Purpose: We aim to evaluate movement behaviour and sleeping patterns using accelerometer.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study to investigate the prevalence of insufficient physical activity in the semi-urban areas of Pokhara Metropolitan City, Nepal. We systematically recruited 436 adults aged 18 to 69 from the study site using random sampling. To measure movement behaviour, we used the wrist-worn Axivity AX3 accelerometer, set at 100 Hz with a dynamic range of ±8g.

Results: Out of 436 participants, 425 have valid data. Male participants constituted about one-third of the population (30.8%). The mean (SD) minutes of MVPA per day was 29.0 (31.2), with males averaging higher at 37.8 minutes compared to females at 25.0 minutes. More than half of the participants (56.9%) did not meet the WHO recommendation of at least 150 minutes of MVPA per week. The mean reported duration of sleep was 6.6 hours per day, while the actual sleep duration was only 5.6 hours per day, resulting in a sleep efficiency of just 79.9%.

Conclusions: Objectively measured physical activity in this population was surprisingly lower than the national average. Additionally, sleep efficiency was also below normal.

Practical Implications: This study highlights the practical use of objective measures of physical activity in community settings in low- and middle-income countries like Nepal.

Funding: This study is part of PhD project and partially funded by university grant.