The Seasonal Periodicity of Healthy Contemplations About Exercise and Weight Loss: Ecological Correlational Study

Abstract

BackgroundLack of physical activity and weight gain are two of the biggest drivers of health care costs in the United States. Healthy contemplations are required before any changes in behavior, and a recent study has shown that they have underlying periodicities.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to examine seasonal variations in state-by-state interest in both weight loss and increasing physical activity, and how these variations were associated with geographic latitude using Google Trends search data for the United States.MethodsInternet search query data were obtained from Google Trends (2004-2016). Time series analysis (every 2 weeks) was performed to determine search volume (normalized to overall search intensity). Seasonality was determined both by the difference in search volumes between winter (December, January, and February) and summer (June, July, and August) months and by the amplitude of cosinor analysis.ResultsExercise-related searches were highest during the winter months, whereas weight loss contemplations showed a biphasic pattern (peaking in the summer and winter months). The magnitude of the seasonal difference increased with increasing latitude for both exercise (R2=.45, F1,49=40.09, beta=−.671, standard deviation [SD]=0.106, P<.001) and weight loss (R2=.24, F1,49=15.79, beta=−.494, SD=0.124, P<.001) searches.ConclusionsHealthy contemplations follow specific seasonal patterns, with the highest contemplations surrounding exercise during the winter months, and weight loss contemplations peaking during both winter and summer seasons. Knowledge of seasonal variations in passive contemplations may potentially allow for more efficient use of public health campaign resources.

Population’s health information-seeking behaviors and geographic variations of stroke in Malaysia: an ecological correlation and time series study

“…The current study was the first from the Asian perspective that has offered triple anticipated relationships in a spatial epidemiological analysis, showing consistencies between HISB and actual stroke counts data with month, weather and geographical variations in the country. Although these findings were consistent with previous studies that explored HISB from a variety of non-communicable diseases through an ecological perspective 33,[54][55][56] , these studies were limited with only two associations; the relationships between online HISB either with incidence of the disease or seasonal variations. The linkage of these attributes could not be speculated with the pattern of seasonal variations and geographical distribution coherently.…”

“…These situations may have catalyzed periodic ups and downs of 'stroke' hit searches frequently via Google Trends. These consistencies were observed in passively generated search queries from Google Trends that have evaluated seasonal patterns in HISB for a variety of non-communicable diseases 2,[54][55][56] .…”

Social-Ecological Correlates of Regular Leisure-Time Physical Activity Practice among Adults

“…Nonetheless, in tropical climate environments, the effects tend to be smaller given the smaller temperature variability [38]. In general, in areas further from the equator, warmer weather favors physical activity practice because of the prevailing low temperatures during most of the year, while in areas closer to the equator, the opposite effect is common with warmer temperatures being associated with less physical activity practice [36,37]. In our study, encouraging climate conditions-temperatures from 21 to 31 • C, relative humidity from 65% to 85%, more hours of sun/year, as well as moderate rainfall-were all associated with a higher prevalence of regular physical activity practice, particularly in men.…”

“…Climate conditions had considerable effects in physical activity practice. The relationship between climate and physical activity has been studied in several aspects, including the effects of temperature change in physical activity practice [34][35][36][37]. In general, warmer climates, but not excessively hot, favor physical activity practice; most results indicate that discouraging weather conditions, such as excessive cold or heat and/or persistent rain, are barriers to regular physical activity practice [34].…”

The aspect of time in online health information behaviour

“…These studies include analysing social media data for pandemics (Chew and Eysenbach, 2010; Ortiz-Martínez and Jiménez-Arcia, 2017; Seo and Shin, 2017) as well as mood swings and depression (Chen et al, 2018). Search engine data has been utilised to investigate a multitude of illnesses and health issues, like mental health issues (Arendt and Scherr, 2017;Ayers et al, 2013;Tana et al, 2018;Tana, 2018), chronic diseases and symptoms (Basnet et al, 2016), diabetes (Tkachenko et al, 2017), different virus and influenza outbreaks (Bragazzi et al, 2017;Carneiro and Mylonakis, 2009;Kraut et al, 2017;Osuka et al, 2018), transient ischemic attack (Abedi et al, 2015), status epilepticus (Brigo and Trinka, 2015), exercise and weight loss (Madden, 2017), as well as Lyme disease (Pesälä et al, 2017;Seifter et al, 2010). Web traffic again has been utilized for studying accessing health information on the internet related to different topics, such as suicide-related information and pharmacovigilance (Wong et al, 2013;Matsuda et al, 2017).…”