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Full-Time
Workers Fall Short on Exercise HealthDayNews
-- If you work all day long, you probably spend precious little time exercising,
what with the siren call of TV, the Internet and video games, a new study finds.
"People
who work full time and people who work part time have different amounts of
discretionary time," explained lead researcher Meghan Warren, a
pre-doctoral fellow in epidemiology and community health at the University of
Minnesota. "Among full-time workers, people who watch more TV spend more
time surfing the Web and playing video games [and] exercise less than people who
don't do those things in their free time." Warren
and her colleagues collected data on 4,498 adults who participated in the
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 1999 and 2000. The
study was to be presented Monday at the American Heart Association's annual
conference on cardiovascular disease, epidemiology and prevention, in
Washington, D.C. The
researchers found that people who worked full time and spent at least five hours
engaged in sedentary activity each day did about 11 fewer minutes of physical
activity, compared with full-time workers who didn't spend any time watching TV,
playing video games or surfing the Web in their free time. However,
part-time workers who spent at least five hours a day doing sedentary activities
tended to exercise about 11 minutes more than part-time workers who didn't spend
any time doing sedentary activities. In
addition, almost 30 percent of the participants took a treadmill test to
determine their physical fitness. Among these 1,319 men and women, those who
spent at least five hours watching TV or using the computer during their time
off were slightly less physically fit compared to those who didn't spend any
leisure time doing sedentary activities. Warren
noted that exercise doesn't have to be done all at once. "The
recommendation of 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week can come in
10-minute blocks of time," she said. "Things like walking to lunch,
parking away from work and walking can give you the recommended amount of
exercise for heart health." "Full-time
workers need to take a look at how they spend their free time," Warren
added. "This may allow them to free up time for exercise. There is time in
every adult's day to exercise." "The
image of the 'couch potato' may be misleading when it comes to characterizing
the physical activity patterns of most Americans," said Dr. David L. Katz,
M.D., director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of
Medicine. "Most of us are not lazy; in fact, we work very hard. It's just
that the hard work we do all day does not involve our muscles." Katz
noted that all that work wears people out, making it tough for someone to tackle
physical activity during down time. "But that's just what we should do, if
we want to promote our health and control our weight. Regular physical activity
is vital to both," he said. "The
message here is that busy people cannot simply hope to find time for physical
activity; we have to make that time," Katz said. "Physical activity is
important and rewarding enough to be a priority in all of our lives. So consider
cutting your TV time in half, and allocating the other half to something active.
You'll likely be around to watch TV for quite a few extra years that way." Two
other reports scheduled for presentation at the meeting related to diet and
exercise and air pollution and heart disease. In
the first report, which was to be presented Saturday, researchers assigned 38
patients who were at risk for heart disease and diabetes an exercise and diet
program or no treatment. The diet was a Mediterranean-style diet, according to
lead researcher Dr. Robert J. Petrella, an associate professor in the Schulich
School of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. After
eight weeks on the program, the patients on the diet and exercise program, in
addition to changes in body weight, reduced blood pressure and improved blood
sugar. In addition, the arteries of these patients, which were stiff at the
start of the program, became "un-stiff," Petrella said. Stiffness
of the arteries is a sign of impending organ dysfunction, "like the heart
starts to fail," Petrella said. "Getting
the right diet and activity can not only improve your weight and blood pressure,
but it can really improve the way your blood vessels function," Petrella
said. "That's really going to protect you from any poor outcomes as a
result of diabetes or high blood pressure." In
the second study, which was to be presented Sunday, researchers from the
University of Washington, who had previously found that long exposure to air
pollution is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, report that
the risk is even greater among obese people. The
researchers collected data on 63,940 postmenopausal women who were in the
Women's Health Initiative Study and who had never had heart disease. The women
were followed for six years. The investigators found that for each increase in
exposure to air pollution, there was a 62 percent increase in fatal and nonfatal
incidence of heart disease. "Chronic
air pollution exposure was associated with overall increased incidence of
cardiovascular disease," the investigators wrote. "A secondary
analysis suggested risk may be further elevated among those with greater
obesity, but not modified by other traditional risk factors." |