(Press-News.org) The effects of physical activity don’t stop when the movement does.
In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Virginia Tech researchers in collaboration with researchers at the University of Aberdeen and Shenzhen University found that being active adds to the total energy you use every day without causing the body to conserve energy in other ways.
This is important because the health benefits of increasing physical activity are already well-documented, but there is less research about how exercise impacts a person’s “energy budget,” or the allocation of energy to different bodily functions.
It has been thought that a person’s energy budget functions in one of two ways: like a fixed salary where energy is redistributed from other functions to cover the cost of movement, or like a flexible, commission-based system that is additive and allows for increased energy expenditure. The team wanted to determine which model better explains how the energy budget actually changes across different levels of physical activity.
To do this, researchers evaluated the total energy expenditure, or the total calories burned in a day, in participants across a wide spectrum of physical activity.
“Our study found that more physical activity is associated with higher calorie burn, regardless of body composition, and that this increase is not balanced out by the body reducing energy spent elsewhere,” said Kevin Davy, professor in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise and the principal investigator of the study.
Participants were asked to drink isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen and then to have their urine samples collected over a period of two weeks. Oxygen is eliminated as water and carbon dioxide, and the hydrogen is eliminated only as water. The difference in the amount of each isotope lost is proportionate to the amount of carbon dioxide produced and, therefore, energy expended. Physical activity was measured using a small sensor worn at the waist that measures motion in multiple directions.
Participants’ physical activity levels varied widely, from sedentary to ultra-endurance running. There were 75 participants between the ages of 19 and 63.
Instead of saving energy in one area to make up for the calories burned through physical activity, the study found that the body continues to function at its usual rate, which means that overall energy use rises in direct response to increased movement.
For example, when the body is maintaining basic functions such as breathing, circulating blood, and regulating temperature, the amount of energy it uses remains stable, the study found. This means the body doesn’t obviously compensate or “cancel out” the extra calories burned through activity.
“Energy balance was a key piece of the study,” said Kristen Howard, senior research associate at Virginia Tech and the article’s lead author. “We looked at folks who were adequately fueled. It could be that apparent compensation under extreme conditions may reflect under-fueling.”
The research also found a clear link between being more active and spending less time sitting still. In simple terms, people who are more physically active are less likely to spend long periods of time being inactive.
As it turns out, the idea that moving more is associated with burning more may not be such a metabolic myth, despite uncertainty among experts on the topic. Though their findings seem to confirm the additive model, the researchers said there is still room for further work in this area. “We need more research to understand in who and under what conditions energy compensation might occur,” said Davy.
END
Physical activity increases total daily energy use, study shows
The study shows that active bodies burn more calories throughout the day and don’t conserve energy in other areas.
2025-10-20
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
National study finds public Montessori programs strengthens early learning outcomes -- at sharply lower costs compared to traditional preschool
2025-10-20
The first national randomized trial of public Montessori preschool students showed stronger long-term outcomes by kindergarten, including elevated reading, memory, and executive function as compared to non-Montessori preschoolers. The research also appears highly actionable for policymakers, because the results found the Montessori programs delivered better outcomes at sharply lower costs. The study of 588 children across two dozen programs nationwide shows an imperative to follow and study these outcomes through graduation and beyond.
A new national study led by researchers from the University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania and the American Institutes for Research found ...
National poll: 1 in 10 young children play outdoors as little as once a week
2025-10-20
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The physical and mental health benefits of outdoor play are well established but one in 10 parents of preschoolers and toddlers say their child plays outside just once a week or less.
Screen time is also increasingly part of the play routine, according to the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health: Nearly a third of parents say their child engages in media play, such as video games, while three in five say ...
How do people learn new facts?
2025-10-20
While studies have linked brain areas to remembering personal experiences, brain areas involved in learning more impersonal information about the world remain unclear. In a new JNeurosci paper, Scott Fairhall and colleagues, from the University of Trento, used fMRI on 29 human volunteers as they performed a learning task to shed light on how the brain acquires semantic, impersonal information.
In the task, participants learned 120 fictitious facts about three imaginary civilizations based off fantasy works, like Game of Thrones. Nearly 2 d later, researchers assessed which facts people recalled better than others during a memory test. Brain imaging pointed to activity from distinct regions ...
Exploring how storytelling strategies shape memories
2025-10-20
Does the way a person hears about an event shape their recollection of it later? In a new JNeurosci paper, Signy Sheldon and colleagues, from McGill University, explored whether different storytelling strategies affect how the brain stores that experience as a memory and recalls it later.
The researchers created narratives with the same core events, but different elaborative details. These elaborations had two different focuses: (1) conceptual details, which describe a person’s feelings and interpretations while experiencing core events, and (2) perceptual details, such as a person’s concrete observations about core events. Neuroimaging ...
How people process mental images versus real-life visuals
2025-10-20
Spatial attention enhances the processing of specific regions within a visual scene as people view their surroundings, much like a spotlight. Do people orient spatial attention the same way when processing mental images from memory? Anthony Clément and Catherine Tallon-Baudry, from École normale supérieure, explored whether neural mechanisms of spatial attention differ when discriminating between locations in mental images versus visuals on a screen.
In their JNeurosci paper, the researchers present an experimental task they developed that enabled them to record brain activity while human ...
Blood test could help predict blood pressure after weight loss surgery in teens
2025-10-20
A groundbreaking study published in Hypertension, the journal of the American Heart Association, has identified a set of blood-based biomarkers that can predict improvements in blood pressure five years after adolescents underwent metabolic bariatric surgery. This is the first study to demonstrate that measures of a patient’s unique biological profile taken before weight loss surgery can outperform traditional demographic and clinical risk factors in forecasting long-term blood pressure outcomes.
“This is the first time blood-based biomarkers have been identified that predict which adolescents are most likely to experience improvements in blood pressure after bariatric ...
Ultra-endurance athletes test the metabolic limits of the human body
2025-10-20
When ultra-runners lace up for races that stretch hundreds of miles and days, they’re not merely testing their mental grit and muscle strength—they’re probing the limits of human biology. Reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 20, researchers found that even the most extreme athletes cannot surpass an average “metabolic ceiling” of 2.5 times their basal metabolic rate (BMR) in energy expenditure.
The metabolic ceiling represents the maximum number of calories a body can burn. Previous research suggested that people can burn up to 10 times their BMR, or the minimum energy required while at rest, for short bursts. ...
Revealing the 'carbon hoofprint' of meat consumption for American cities
2025-10-20
Depending on where you live in the United States, the meat you eat each year could be responsible for a level of greenhouse gas emissions that's similar to what's emitted to power your house.
That's according to new research from the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study provides a first-of-its kind, systematic analysis that digs into the environmental impacts of the sprawling supply chains that the country relies on for its beef, pork and chicken.
Supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the team calculated and mapped those impacts, which they've dubbed meat's ...
Like radar, a brain wave sweeps a cortical region to read out information held in working memory
2025-10-20
Imagine you are a security guard in one of those casino heist movies where your ability to recognize an emerging crime will depend on whether you notice a subtle change on one of the many security monitors arrayed on your desk. That’s a challenge of visual working memory. According to a new study by neuroscientists in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, your ability to quickly spot the anomaly could depend on a theta-frequency brain wave (3–6 Hz) that scans through a region of the cortex that maps your field of view.
The findings in animals, published Oct. 20 in Neuron, help to explain how the brain implements visual working memory and why performance ...
Resistance to epilepsy treatments may wane over time
2025-10-20
About one-third of patients with focal epilepsy, a common form of the neurological disorder, are believed to respond poorly to available therapies. Yet they too may eventually see improvement, if not total relief, from their seizures, a new study shows.
Most people with epilepsy have focal epilepsy, which occurs when nerve cells in a certain brain region send out a sudden, excessive burst of electrical signals. This uncontrolled activity, which is called a focal seizure, can cause problems such as abnormal emotions or feelings and unusual behaviors.
Led by NYU Langone Health researchers, the new study, which was part of the international ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Most of Wine Country’s agricultural workers have been exposed to wildfires, new survey finds
Obesity-related cancer rising among both younger and older adults worldwide
A 'Rosetta Stone' for molecular systems
What goes up must come down – scientists unearth “universal thermal performance curve” that shackles evolution
Physical activity increases total daily energy use, study shows
National study finds public Montessori programs strengthens early learning outcomes -- at sharply lower costs compared to traditional preschool
National poll: 1 in 10 young children play outdoors as little as once a week
How do people learn new facts?
Exploring how storytelling strategies shape memories
How people process mental images versus real-life visuals
Blood test could help predict blood pressure after weight loss surgery in teens
Ultra-endurance athletes test the metabolic limits of the human body
Revealing the 'carbon hoofprint' of meat consumption for American cities
Like radar, a brain wave sweeps a cortical region to read out information held in working memory
Resistance to epilepsy treatments may wane over time
Precision reprogramming: How AI tricks cancer’s toughest cells
US physician Medicare program participation and exit, 2013-2023
A direct-to-patient digital health program for lung cancer screening
Belgian scientists discover how cells protect our skin from inflammatory disease – paving the way for new treatments
Effectiveness of colchicine for the treatment of long COVID
Distance to care and telehealth abortion demand after Dobbs
Epidural electrical stimulation for functional recovery in incomplete spinal cord injury
Transformative eye research expands donor pool for corneal transplant patients
Retinal implant restores central vision in patients with advanced AMD, study co-led by Pitt investigator shows
Eye prosthesis is the first to restore sight lost to macular degeneration
Pioneering eye device restores reading vision to blind eyes
Subretinal implant partially restores vision in AMD patients
3D printed antenna arrays developed for flexible wireless systems
When is the brain like a subway station? When it’s processing many words at once
Important phenomenon discovered in the Arctic – could boost marine life
[Press-News.org] Physical activity increases total daily energy use, study showsThe study shows that active bodies burn more calories throughout the day and don’t conserve energy in other areas.