Do spiritual and global health associate with vigorous physical activity among adolescents?

Abstract

Background: Global and spiritual health are topics of emerging scientific interest. However, both have been examined relating to general health indicators or climate anxiety without paying much attention to its potential impact on physical activity (PA) [1,2].Research shows that adolescents with stronger expressed spiritual health consistently report higher levels of general health. The evidence on adolescent vigorous PA clearly indicates long- and short-term health effects, as well as sustainable habit-forming properties [2,3].Objective: We analyzed how global and spiritual health are associated with PA among adolescents. Methods: Data were collected in December 2021 during the HBSC national pilot survey in Lithuania (n=453, aged 13.96±2.20 years). From the self-report questionnaire, the indicators reflecting PA, global health, spiritual health, demographic, and socioeconomic status were analyzed. The main analysis was conducted using univariate logistic regression method. Results: Vigorous PA was sufficient among 27.1% girls and 46.4% boys. Among adolescents, spirituality can be considered as a predictor of higher vigorous PA (OR=1.35,95% CI [1.04-1.76], p=0.023), while global health showed weaker and non-significant association with vigorous PA (OR=1.26, 95% CI [0.97-1.62], p=0.078).Conclusions: This study reveals that spiritual health is more predictive for vigorous PA than global health. These results add to our knowledge about the relevance of the construct of spiritual health in the PA process. Following this, it might be interesting to further explore possible determinants of spiritual health and vigorous PA interaction among adolescents. A similar but non-significant associations of global health should also be explored in more detail. Conclusions: Teachers and parental support are major influential factors in preventing risky behaviour of alcohol consumption during crises among adolescence. Our finding scan contribute to developing and implementing intervention programs to address the consequences of crises that affect adolescents.