Associations of meeting 24-h movement guidelines with stress and self-rated health among adults: is meeting more guidelines associated with greater benefits?

BackgroundSeveral countries have recently issued 24-h movement guidelines that include quantitative recommendations for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), sedentary behaviour (SB), and sleep. This study explored the associations of meeting the 24-h movement guidelines with stress and self-rated health among adults, and whether the likelihood of favourable outcomes increases with the number of guidelines met.MethodsA total of 2476 adults aged 18years and over completed a questionnaire on their time spent in MVPA, SB and sleep, frequency of stress (never, very rarely, occasionally, often, every day), self-rated health (very good, good, fair, bad, very bad), sociodemographic characteristics, and lifestyle variables.ResultsIn an ordinal logistic regression analysis adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, education, socio-economic status, employment, place of residence, living with or without partner, and smoking, lower odds of higher frequency of stress were found for those meeting the combined 24-h movement guidelines (adjusted odds ratio [OR]=0.45; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.32, 0.63; p< 0.001), any combination of two guidelines (OR range: 0.48-0.63; p< 0.05 for all), and sleep guideline only (OR=0.51; 95% CI: 0.35, 0.75; p=0.001). Higher odds of better self-rated health were found for those meeting the combined 24-h movement guidelines (OR=2.94; 95% CI: 2.07, 4.19; p< 0.001), combination of MVPA and SB guidelines (OR=2.33; 95% CI: 1.57, 3.44; p< 0.001), combination of MVPA and sleep guidelines (OR=1.78; 95% CI: 1.23, 2.59; p=0.002), and MVPA guideline only (OR=2.24; 95% CI: 1.50, 3.36; p< 0.001). Meeting more guidelines was associated with greater odds of favourable outcomes (p for linear trend