Associação do exercício físico e tempo de tela na saúde autopercebida de professores em home office na pandemia da Covid-19

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic led teachers to migrate from traditional educational methods to remote work, causing changes in the health and quality of life of these educators. OBJECTIVE: To investigate physical exercise and sedentary behavior related to the perceived health of school teachers who worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Cross-sectional study, 14,979 public school teachers from Minas Gerais, Brazil, aged 21 to 77 years old completed an online survey between August 20th and September 11th , 2020. The questions present in the questionnaire used perceived health, quality of life, sadness and anxiety. Teachers were categorized as inactive when not accumulating a minimum of 150 minutes of physical exercise per week. High screen-related sedentary behavior was defined as spending more than 5 hours per day in front of a screen. RESULTS: Ordinal logistic regression predict that regardless of TV viewing time, inactive teachers were more likely to report very bad health (OR = 1.07; CI = 0.96-1.19) and quality of life (OR = 0.99; CI = 0.88 - 2.14), as well as frequent feelings of sadness (OR = 1.45; CI = 1.30 – 1.61) and anxiety (OR = 1.48; IC = 1.33 – 1.65). A cluster of inactivity and high screen time was associated with worsening of very bad health and very bad quality of life, whereas the cluster of inactivity and low screen time was associated with very poor health and quality of life. CONCLUSION: Low levels of physical exercise are associated with negative perceptions of teachers' health, which can be exacerbated by excessive time spent in sedentary behavior associated with screen time.