Pedometer assessed physical activity of people with metabolic syndrome in Poland.

Introduction: Metabolic syndrome is a contemporary disease of civilization, an effect of lack of healthy behaviour, a consequence of lifestyle devoid of physical activity, eating poor quality food rich in calories and excessive stress. Apart from a proper diet, physical activity remains an important part of metabolic syndrome management.

Objective: The main objective of the work was to evaluate the physical activity of an adult population of patients with metabolic syndrome. materials and method. Adults aged 35-70 fulfilling the criteria of metabolic syndrome according to International Diabetes Federation (IDF) were included. New Lifestyles NL-2000 pedometers were used to assess locomotive physical activity during an entire week.

Results: In the group of 100 subjects, as many as 61 people (61%) represented low or sedentary activity, while nearly one fourth of the respondents - 23 (32%) represented the negligible activity type. Average weekly physical activity of those in the study was 6,743 steps/day (in 100 individuals) and ranged from 1,781-15,169. A great diversity was found in the study group, since the highest number of steps per day was 23,347 and the lowest - 409. No significant differences in the number of steps on weekdays and at weekends were observed (mean: 6,676/day and 6,913/day, respectively). A statistically significant negative correlation (r = -0.29) was observed between age and physical activity, between the average daily number of steps in the week and Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) (r = 0.201), as well as between the average daily number of steps in the week and Body Mass Index (BMI) (r = 0.226).

Conclusions: The majority of people with metabolic syndrome represent a low or sedentary activity type and decrease of physical activity corresponds to increasing age, BMI and WHR. No significant differences in physical activity are observed between working days and free days (weekends).