Is your job making you fat?
Universite de Montreal study links office work with obesity
2010-10-06
(Press-News.org) Montreal, October 05, 2010 – Working nine-to-five may be the way to make a living, but it may be padding more than the wallet. According to a new study from the Université de Montréal, office-workers have become less active over the last three decades and this decreased activity may partly explain the rise in obesity. Their findings, published in the early online edition of Preventive Medicine, may have health implications for the millions of people toiling behind their desks.
"People eat better and exercise more today than they did in the 1970's, yet obesity rates continue to rise," says lead author Carl-Étienne Juneau a researcher at the Université de Montréal Department of Social and Preventive Medicine. "My hypothesis is that our professional life is linked to this seemingly contradictory phenomenon."
Activity: From the 70's to now
Juneau and his colleagues used several Statistics Canada databases on the health of Canadians that included 17,000 to 132,000 respondents. He concluded that the lack of physical activity during office hours could explain the fact that obesity has increased 10 percent between 1978 and 2004.
A surprise findings was the increased healthy attitudes toward transportation. "As a result of urban sprawl we expected to see more car-dependant people," says Juneau. "Yet, both men and women increasingly adopted healthy behaviours such as walking and biking, which is definitely good news."
Quick bursts of activity may be the solution
Juneau suggests that to combat the inactivity and rise in obesity it would be best to integrate sport, work and transportation. For example, it may be more effective to exercise in smaller doses throughout the day rather than concentrate the effort. Therefore, walking at break time and taking the stairs could have great benefits.
Juneau also believes that the promotion and marketing of exercise can be tweaked. "Exercise can't just be an individual thing anymore. We must focus on groups. For instance, there are now tax credits for parents who register their child in a recognized physical education course. A similar program could be developed in the workplace for employees."
INFORMATION:
Partners in research:
This study was funded by the Fonds de recherche en santé du Québec, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the University of Montreal Public Health Research Institute, the University of Montreal, and the Quebec Inter-University Centre for Social Statistics.
About the study:
The paper, Trends in leisure-, transport-, and work-related physical activity in Canada 1994-2005, was authored by Carl-Étienne Juneau and Louise Potvin from the Université de Montréal.
On the Web:
Preventive Medicine: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00917435
Université de Montréal: www.umontreal.ca/english
Media contact:
Julie Gazaille
Press attaché
University of Montreal
Telephone: 514 343 6796
Email: j.cordeau-gazaille@umontreal.ca
Twitter: http://twitter.com/uMontreal_news
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2010-10-06
Today's Oct. 4 issue of the high-impact journal, Applied Physics Letters, contains a new electrofluidics design from the University of Cincinnati and start-up company Gamma Dynamics that promises to dramatically reshape the image capabilities of electronic devices.
This patent-pending electrofluidics breakthrough by the Novel Devices Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati and partner companies Gamma Dynamics, Dupont and Sun Chemical follows about seven years of work. According to lead researcher Jason Heikenfeld, UC associate professor of electrical and computer engineering ...
2010-10-06
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Fish oil – long encouraged by doctors as a supplement to support heart and joint health, among other benefits – induced severe colitis and colon cancer in mice in research led by Michigan State University and published this month in the journal Cancer Research.
Jenifer Fenton, a food science and human nutrition researcher at MSU, led the research that supports establishing a dose limit for docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), one of the omega-3 fatty acids present in fish oil, particularly in people suffering from chronic conditions such as inflammatory bowel ...
2010-10-06
A balloon angioplasty device that sucks up dangerous plaque debris could trigger a "paradigm shift" in how physicians treat peripheral artery disease, researchers write in the current issue of Endovascular Today.
"We will see a shift in how we treat lesions," write Dr. Robert Dieter of Loyola University Health System and Dr. Aravinda Nanjundappa of West Virginia University.
In two clinical trials totaling 123 patients, the device had a success rate of 97 percent to 99 percent and consistently outperformed filter devices typically used to capture debris particles, Dieter ...
2010-10-06
GRAND RAPIDS, MICH., Oct. 5, 2010 – Only about a third of American women are meeting their fruit and vegetable intake recommendations, which means they are likely missing out on potentially important breast and ovarian health benefits (1). Along with vitamins, minerals and fiber, fruits and vegetables contain a type of phytonutrient called carotenoids, which research suggests help support women's health including breast and ovarian health.
Based on a new report called America's Phytonutrient Report: Women's Health by Color, older women have total carotenoid intakes ...
2010-10-06
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 5, 2010 -- By installing wireless sensors and replacing faulty traps along the 12 miles of steam lines at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, officials expect to save as much as $675,000 per year.
With 1,600 steam traps, which normally open slightly to discharge condensed steam with a negligible loss of live steam, the problem occurs when a trap fails and that failure goes undetected and unrepaired, said Teja Kuruganti, a member of the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division.
Manual inspections of each trap is a daunting and sometimes dangerous ...
2010-10-06
DALLAS (SMU) – New research produced by Southern Methodist University's Geothermal Laboratory, funded by a grant from Google.org, suggests that the temperature of the Earth beneath the state of West Virginia is significantly higher than previously estimated and capable of supporting commercial baseload geothermal energy production.
Geothermal energy is the use of the Earth's heat to produce heat and electricity. "Geothermal is an extremely reliable form of energy, and it generates power 24/7, which makes it a baseload source like coal or nuclear," said David Blackwell, ...
2010-10-06
Under the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (Directive 2000/60/CE), member states are required to achieve Good Water Status for water (continental, estuarine, subterranean and coastal water bodies) in Europe by 2015. Surface water quality is assessed taking into account the ecological and chemical status.
The quality of aquatic systems is more accurately assessed using the status of both the water column and the underlying sediment. A recent study by researchers of AZTI-Tecnalia concluded that water bodies risk being misclassified if, on evaluating their chemical status, ...
2010-10-06
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new "templated growth" technique for fabricating nanometer-scale graphene devices. The method addresses what had been a significant obstacle to the use of this promising material in future generations of high-performance electronic devices.
The technique involves etching patterns into the silicon carbide surfaces on which epitaxial graphene is grown. The patterns serve as templates directing the growth of graphene structures, allowing the formation of nanoribbons of specific widths without the use of ...
2010-10-06
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Wind power is likely to play a large role in the future of sustainable, clean energy, but wide-scale adoption has remained elusive. Now, researchers have found wind farms' effects on local temperatures and proposed strategies for mediating those effects, increasing the potential to expand wind farms to a utility-scale energy resource.
Led by University of Illinois professor of atmospheric sciences Somnath Baidya Roy, the research team will publish its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper will appear in the journal's ...
2010-10-06
PHILADELPHIA –- Physicists and neuroscientists from the University of Pennsylvania have linked the cell structure of the retina to the light and dark contrasts of the natural world, demonstrating the likelihood that the neural pathways humans use for seeing are adapted to best capture the world around us.
Researchers found that retinal ganglion cells that see darkness are more numerous and cluster closer together than those that see light, corresponding to the fact that the natural world contains more dark spots than light. Now physicists, and not just pessimists, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Is your job making you fat?
Universite de Montreal study links office work with obesity