Norway has its share of male couch potatoes
More and more Norwegians are heeding health authorities’ advice to take regular exercise, a new survey has shown. But not all Norwegians are equally physically active. In fact, Norwegian men appear to be less active on average than even their American counterparts.
By now it should be a familiar mantra: health officials across the globe tell us that we should take at least 30 minutes of physical exercise five days a week to decrease the risk of a host of lifestyle illnesses, from diabetes to heart disease.
According to a new survey conducted by the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences on behalf of the Norwegian Directorate of Health, 200,000 more Norwegians are taking this health advice seriously and meeting minimum recommended exercise amounts than did 6 years ago.
But not everyone is equally good at following this advice, the survey also showed. Researchers were surprised to find that only one in four Norwegian men between the age of 20-34 follows the minimum recommendations for physical activity, said Bjørn Guldvog, Norway’s Director General of Health, at a press conference.
“We are far from the top (in terms of physical exercise) in Norway. Young Norwegian men are perhaps less active than American men, and that is puzzling,” Guldvog said.
A nation of outdoors people - and couch potatoes
Norwegians pride themselves on their relationship to the outdoors and to nature, so much so that they have a word – “friluftsliv”, which literally translates as outdoor life – to describe this important component of the national character.
In spite of this self-perception, seven of ten Norwegian are still not active enough to meet minimum recommendations for exercise, the survey showed. Guldvog said authorities need to find out why so many young Norwegian men in particular are inactive.
“In many ways, young men are in the best position to be physically active, so we need to find out more about the reasons why they are not,” he said. Older men, he noted, are better at exercising more.
Women most active
Norwegian women, however, are more active than their male counterparts regardless of age, the survey also showed. Thirty-four per cent of Norwegian women meet the minimum recommendations for exercise as compared to 29 per cent of men. Women between the ages of 50 and 60 are particularly active.
Another surprise of the survey was that many people overestimate how physically active they actually are. The researchers had the advantage of being able to measure the physical activity of 5000 survey takers using accelerometers, which they were then able to compare to the responses of those individuals to the amount of exercise they reported on the survey.
The difference between reported activity and actual activity was most noticeable in men, said Bjørge Herman Hansen, a postdoc at the Norwegian School of Sports Science who worked with the survey.
Part of the reason for this may be the differences in the kinds of physical activity that men and women undertake, he said.
“Women are more likely to undertake more continuous moderate to vigorous intensity exercise than many men. For example, women may go to an exercise class at the gym, while men play football, which can involve a lot of standing around,” Hansen said. “The accelerometers will record that difference.”
Differences in social classes increased
The survey also showed that there remain big differences in social classes between those who are active or passive. Individuals with higher education were more likely to be active compared to individuals who had only completed a primary and lower secondary school education, the survey showed.
Well-educated men were twice as active as their less well-educated counterparts, while the difference for women was not as pronounced.
Nevertheless, well-educated men sit still for an hour-and-a-half longer now than they did four years ago. Overall, Norwegians sit still for 62 per cent of their waking hours.
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Read the Norwegian version of this article at forskning.no
