Objectively Measured Physical Activity and Fat Mass in a Large Cohort of Children
Background: Obesity is a serious risk factor for many health problems such as heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.
- Obesity is becoming more common
- It is an energy imbalance, which means that a person consumes more than they burn off in physical activity.
Purpose: The researchers wanted to use new techniques to help them record physical activity and measure fat mass. They did this to see if there was a difference in obese and non-obese people based on their various levels of activity.
Methods: Actigraph: Electronic motion sensor compising a single plane accelerometer. It records all vertical movement and the intensity of that movement. ( with the exception of swimming, biking and sleeping which were recorded by the individual children)
- BMI: Body Mass Index: Weight/height squared
Results: Found the greater the fat mass the lower the level of physical activity.
-It was found to be greater in boys than in girls.
- Association between obesity and physical activity appeared to be from moderate to viscorous physical activity.
Graph: x-axis; Used quintiles, which are sections that were broken up into 20% increments. In Model one that measured just the moderate viscorous activity and what your chances of becoming obese were. In model 2: the took into account the activity level as well as the mothers education level, social class, birthweight, etc..
- Y-axis: Told the chances of being obese.
They found a strong correlation with moderate and more viscorous activity and obesity and it was stronger in boys compared with girls.
