Posts Tagged ‘physical activity’

Angels Dancing Make for Good Exercise

December 17, 2022 — Do angels dancing on the head of a pin get good exercise? We’ll have to get back to you on that one. But we can say that thinking about the value of exercise for overcoming obesity is worthwhile. In the International Journal of Obesity over the last few weeks an excellent conversation about this has […]

Take the Stairs for a Longer Life?

December 9, 2022 — We have four levels in our home – three sets of stairs to climb. So this new study in Nature Medicine yesterday definitely has our attention. Digging into observational activity monitor data from the UK Biobank, Emmanuel Stamatakis and colleagues from all over the world found that short bursts of vigorous activity – like quickly […]

Killing People Who Are Physically Active

November 30, 2022 — Some of the questions we encounter here come with a lot of ambiguity, but this is not one of them. The U.S. is killing more people who are physically active – pedestrians and cyclists – than any other wealthy country. Clearly, this is not good. Without a doubt, this gives the U.S. a failing grade […]

The Social Dimension of Physical Activity

November 28, 2022 — How important is the social dimension of physical activity? Recent modeling research published in PLOS One suggests that it’s critical. Ensela Mema and colleagues developed a mathematical model to estimate both social and non-social influences on physical activity across the population. They found that social influences were critical for maintaining physical activity or reducing sedentary […]

Obesity Causes: Thoughts on Food and Activity

October 19, 2022 — The second day of the epic meeting on obesity causes at the Royal Society in London came round to the subject that preoccupies almost everyone – food and physical activity. One thing is certain. This is a pair of subjects that evokes strong passions, but the strength of the data often does not match the […]

Stepping Up Your Steps: Is More Really Better?

October 12, 2022 — In a typical day, most people really don’t move around that much. The simplest way of quantifying this is by counting steps and the average for an American adult is between three and four thousand per day. The default goal for improving on this became 10,000 steps – probably because an early pedometer called the […]

Has the Pandemic Made the World Less Active?

September 27, 2022 — We’re not quite done with COVID-19 – roughly 400 people are still dying daily from it in the U.S. But some of our leaders are saying the pandemic is over. Well, we’ll leave that debate to the poli-med pundits. However it’s worth noting that it looks like we’re not on track to go back to […]

A Boom in Fitness Trackers, a Bust in Fitness

May 28, 2022 — Worldwide sales of fitness trackers increased from US$14 billion in 2017 to over $36 billion in 2020. The skyrocketing success of these gadgets suggests that more people than ever see some value in keeping tabs on the number of steps they take, flights of stairs they climb, time they spend sitting, and calories they burn. […]

Two Reasons for Failure to Prevent the Rise of Obesity

January 29, 2022 — For decades now, public health figures have been talking about an urgent need to prevent and reverse the rise of obesity. A number of U.S. presidents – notably George W. Bush and Barack Obama – have embraced this goal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a whole division devoted to this goal. […]

Rethinking a Study of the Biggest Loser

December 21, 2021 — If nothing else, we have learned in recent years that it is possible to rationalize anything. In the pandemic and in politics, we see people taking a set of facts and coming up with wildly different interpretations. Likewise in science, we have to think hard about how to make sense of new findings. With new […]