NAIROBI: A team of Canadian medical researchers on Tuesday, revealed that a one-day YouTube screening found Kenya to have been among 13 countries globally searching for information on a sedentary lifestyle.
The study carried out on May 20 last year and published on Tuesday in the Interactive Journal of Medical Research had used the search word ‘sedentary’.
The search word was associated with the unhealthy behaviour where huge populations of young workers spend many hours sitting down behind computers or televisions.
“Computers were set to ‘incognito’ or ‘worldwide’ to ensure that search results would not be limited to local country of searching but instead include videos from around the globe,” says lead author Emily Knight of University of Western Ontario.
The top 13 countries which had searched for the word sedentary on that day turned out to include only Kenya and South Africa from the African continent. This was alongside Australia, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States.
A further scrutiny of the searches, say the authors, indicated that the searchers may not have been satisfied with the information they got from the YouTube sites visited.
“The videos had remarkably low numbers of people who shared or commented,” the researchers said.
The findings, the researchers say, may show that the YouTube users on that day did not get what they wanted with much of the content confusing physical activity with sedentary behaviour.
Sedentary behaviour as a health risk, the study says is quite new, with most people not aware of the health consequences of prolonged sedentary behaviour, but also of the distinction between “too much sitting” and “not enough exercise”.
“This is a perfect opportunity where health educators can develop and upload specific health messages that Kenyans are searching for and not getting. A positive tool to make a positive mark,” says Vincent Onywera of Kenyatta University.
Prof Onywera is behind The Report Card on Physical Activity and Body Weight of Children and Youth that details how Kenyan children compare to others in the world.
In his second report released last year, Onywera said parents have largely failed to keep their children active and physically healthy hence exposing them to the risk of lifestyle diseases.
“It is gratifying that they are seeking ‘what to do’ information on the issue,” said Onywera.
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