preventive medicine
Is your job making you fat?
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 …
Physical Activity Prolongs Life, Even for the Obese
Being inactive is more life-threatening than being overweight or obese, results of one of the first studies to consider body weight and physical activity simultaneously and assess their independent effects on mortality has found. For the determinedly sedentary, that’s the bad news. The good news is that participants didn’t need to be marathon runners to decrease their mortality risk.
Too Fat to Fight: Obesity Becomes National Security Issue
If the U.S. military needed to recruit substantial numbers of young men and women into their forces quickly, they would face a vexing obstacle: the chubby American. Moreover, military weight limits for women are stricter than for men in all of the forces, making it harder for women to get into the military and if they get in, to stay within weight limits without jeopardizing their health. At least 13 percent of young men and 17 percent of young women of prime recruitment age would fail the weight requirements of all four services, researchers at the University at Buffalo and The Johns Hopkins University have found. “This study shows that obesity is not just a public health issue, it’s a national security concern as well,” said Carlos Crespo, Dr. PH, study co-author and associate professor of social and preventive medicine at the University at Buffalo. “We’re not physically fit to defend ourselves.”