Browsing by Author "Simpanen, Sonja"

Aims. Individuals can be divided into three chronotypes based on their preferred timing of sleep and activity: morning-, neither- and evening-type. Evening-type has been associated with many health-related risks and higher depressive and anxiety symptoms (DA symptoms), but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In adolescence evening-type becomes more common, DA symptoms increase and physical activity decreases. The aim of this study is to examine the mediational associations between chronotype, exercise and DA symptoms in adolescence. Furthermore, the differences between genders are examined. Methods. The data used was from a Finnish cohort study SleepHelsinki!. 997 16‒17-years old adolescents (63.8% girls) participated in the study. Chronotype was assessed with MCTQ. BDI-II and GAD-7 were used to assess DA symptoms respectively. The amount of exercise was measured as hours per month. Mediation analysis with bootstrapping was used to examine the indirect associations between variables. Results and Conclusions. Evening-type was associated with higher DA symptoms, but exercise did not mediate this association when sleep loss, smoking and alcohol consumption were taken into consideration. Instead chronotype mediated the association between exercise and DA symptoms. According to these results the amount of exercise is not that relevant in the association. Instead more important is to concentrate on the type of exercise and to enhance the lifestyle of evening-types in other ways e.g. increasing social support considering gender differences.