The relationship of weather with daily physical activity and the time spent out of home in older adults from Germany – the ActiFE study

Abstract

Background

There is a need for a comprehensive evaluation of the associations between varieties of weather conditions on the time spent out-of-home (TOH) and on walking duration (WD) among older adults. We aim to investigate the extent to which various weather parameters (temperature, solar radiation, sunshine duration, humidity, windspeed, and rain) determine daily WD the TOH in older adults.

Methods

The ActiFE (Activity and Function in Older People in Ulm) study is a prospective study of participants aged 65 years or older who wore an accelerometer and kept a movement diary in up to three temporally separated waves from 2009 to 2018 for a duration up to seven days per wave (up to three weeks in summary). We used weather data from a weather station near the participants‘ homes. Age-adjusted and gender-stratified generalized mixed models were used to predict WD and TOH (with 95% confidence interval (CI)) within and between weather categories. Generalized additive models were computed for the single predictions at the weather quartile boundaries. Cubic splines (with 95% pointwise confidence bands (CB)) visualized the continuous course of the weather values.

Results

Higher temperatures, solar radiation and more hours of sunshine, led to an increase in WD and TOH, while higher precipitation, humidities and windspeeds led to a decrease. Women had in general higher WD and TOH times than men.

Conclusions

Our data suggest that weather parameters have a considerable influence on PA and TOH. Future analyses and interpretation of PA data should therefore account for weather parameters.