December 9, 2024 — Eat healthy and get your exercise. It is a straightforward framework for dealing with obesity. But that simple prescription of diet and exercise for preventing obesity overlooks a critical factor – the prolonged sitting time very often required by work and school. A recent study of data from young adult twins showed that sitting time […]
December 3, 2024 — “This seems like a landmark paper in my books and a call from the other side of the energy balance equation. We seem built to be a highly physically active species, not sedentary office workers and couch dwellers.” With these words, Professor Emeritus Jennie Brand-Miller seized our attention today. She was writing about a new […]
November 13, 2024 — Standing desks arrived with high hopes of countering the health risks of a sedentary office lifestyle, promising to reduce heart disease and improve circulation. However, recent research in the International Journal of Epidemiology casts doubt on whether simply swapping sitting for standing delivers these benefits. Cardiovascular Risk Benefit? In a study of over 83,000 adults, […]
October 21, 2024 — “We conclude that exercise and video gaming have differential effects on the brain, which may help individuals tailor their lifestyle choices to promote mental and cognitive health, respectively, across the lifespan.” This conclusion comes from a preprint published on PsyArXiv. Science, health, and lifestyle reporters got even more bold with their conclusions. For instance, the […]
March 29, 2024 — A fascinating new study is prompting some very clickable headlines this week. It is all about the interaction of genetic risk for obesity and physical activity. It shows that in people with higher genetic risk scores for obesity, the association between physical activity (using daily step counts as a surrogate) and BMI is different than […]
February 29, 2024 — What could explain the observation that self-reports of exercise predict less of a benefit for men than women? In the Journal of the American College of Cardiology researchers nimbly leap to a conclusion that women get greater gains in mortality risk reduction from “equivalent doses” of physical activity. But would men exaggerate their self-reports? When […]
November 24, 2023 — What is the difference between exercise and physical activity? Does it really matter? A recent review in Current Nutrition Reports suggests that this is a distinction that makes a difference. Oxford tells us that exercise is “activity requiring physical effort, carried out to sustain or improve health and fitness.” But physical activity is “any form […]
November 10, 2023 — The pandemic has wrought a stark change in how Americans get around – 36% less walking and 37% more cycling. Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths hit a 40-year high last year. Active transportation in the U.S. has both risks and rewards. A Universal Decline The drop in walking trips was uniform across the country. Emily Adler, the […]
September 25, 2023 — “Morning workouts turbocharge the benefits of exercise,” says Psychology Today. A litany of headlines like this have been crossing our screen for weeks now. They are insistent. “The early bird gets the worm – and sees better workout results,” said People magazine. “This is the best time of day to work out if you want […]
July 20, 2023 — Obesity care is suffering from a blinding distraction – BMI and weight loss. It’s not hard to find critiques of this. The American Medical Association recently cautioned physicians against the misuse of BMI as a surrogate for health and obesity. PLOS One has a new paper telling us BMI may not necessarily increase mortality independently […]
