HEALTH / FITNESS

PLUS | SUNDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2014

Why fat people

tend to overeat
T

riggers such as the smell of popcorn at a

movie theatre or a commercial for a snack
may have a stronger pull for obese people due
to differences in brain chemistry, says a study.
Obese people tend to have greater dopamine
activity in the habit forming region of the
brain than their lean counterparts and lesser
dopamine activity in the region controlling
rewards, the ndings showed.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps
control the brains reward and pleasure centres.
These differences could potentially make the
obese people more drawn to overeat in response
to food triggers and simultaneously make food
less rewarding to them.
Eating based on unconscious habits rather
than conscious choices could make it harder to
achieve and maintain a healthy weight, especially when appetizing food cues are practically
everywhere, said lead author Kevin Hall from
the National Institutes of Health in the US.
The study involved 43 men and women with
varying amounts of body fat.
Study participants followed the same eating,
sleeping and activity schedule. Tendency to overeat in response to triggers in the environment
was determined from a detailed questionnaire.
Positron emission tomography (PET) scans
evaluated the sites in the brain where dopamine
was able to act. The study appeared in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Eating sh may help prevent

hearing loss in women

onsumption of two or more servings of sh

per week may reduce the risk of hearing
loss in women, US researchers said.
Acquired hearing loss is a highly prevalent
and often disabling chronic health condition,
Xinhua quoted lead author Sharon Curhan of
Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston as
saying in a statement.
Although a decline in hearing is often considered an inevitable aspect of aging, the identication of several potentially modiable risk factors
has provided new insight into possibilities for
prevention or delay of acquired hearing loss.
The new study, published online in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, examined the associations between consumption
of total and specic types of sh, long-chain
omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA),
and self-reported hearing loss in women.
Of the 65,215 women who were followed from
1991-2009, 11,606 cases of incident hearing loss
were reported.
When compared with women who rarely consumed sh, women who consumed two or more
servings of sh per week had a 20 percent lower
risk of hearing loss, the study found.
When examined individually, higher consumption of each specic sh type was inversely
associated with risk.
Higher intake of long-chain omega-3 PUFA
was also inversely associated with risk of hearing loss. Consumption of any type of sh (tuna,
dark sh, light sh, or shellsh) tended to be
associated with lower risk, Curhan said.
These ndings suggest that diet may be
important in the prevention of acquired hearing loss.
Agencies

Stints of standing
while working may
reduce back pain

By Janice Neumann

he evils of too much sitting include body aches,

pains and fatigue, but a
new study suggests that
30-minute stints of standing at
work may relieve aching backs
without harming productivity.
Australian ofce workers alternated between sitting and standing every 30 minutes for a week
and felt less fatigued and less back
pain and lower-leg pain than when
they stayed seated the whole day.
Our results conrm what we
expected that introducing regular breaks across the workday
leads to improvements in fatigue
and musculoskeletal symptoms
compared to sitting all day, said
Alica A Thorp, a postdoctoral
research fellow at the Baker IDI
Heart and Diabetes Institute in
Melbourne, Australia, who led the
study.
Prolonged sitting has been
linked with a variety of health
problems, but ofce workers
often have little choice about their
work environment. Past research
has found ofce workers spend
about 75 percent of their work
day sitting in a chair, Thorps
team writes in Occupational and
Environmental Medicine.
The researchers set out to study
various effects on health including joint and muscle pain and on
workers focus and productivity of
taking standing breaks during
the day.
For the study, 17 men and six

women were randomly assigned

to one of two groups. Everyone
used an electric adjustable-height
workstation, but one group sat
while working over the course of
an eight-hour day and the other
alternated every 30 minutes
between sitting and standing.
The workers did this for ve
days, then during a second ve-day
work week, the groups switched
roles.The participants were mostly
middle-aged, 15 were overweight
and the rest were obese.
People in the sit-stand group,
who adjusted the height of the
table as they stood up to work,
wore a physical activity monitor on their right thigh to gauge
their sitting, standing and walking times.
On day ve of each work week,
everyone lled out questionnaires
measuring their fatigue levels,
musculoskeletal discomfort, feelings about their own productivity and how well they liked the
adjustable workstation.
People had an average fatigue
score of 52.7 when they sit-stood
while working, compared to 67.8
when they sat all day. A score of
66 or more was considered an elevated level of fatigue compared to
what a healthy person would feel.
People in the sit-stand group
also had 32 percent fewer musculoskeletal symptoms in the lower
back and 14 percent fewer in their
ankles and feet compared to when
they sat all day.
Workers reported better focus
and concentration while seated,

11

although work productivity did

not differ signicantly between
the two study groups. There was
also a trend toward better productivity and less impatience and
irritability in the sit-stand group,
the researchers said.
The workstation was also much
more pleasant overall for the sitstand groups, who rated their
enjoyment of it at 81 out of 100,
versus a score of 64 for the sittingonly groups.
While we didnt see a statistically signicant improvement
in productivity, the nding that
intermittent standing across the
workday did not adversely affect
workers productivity is important, Thorp said.
Given that we observed a signicant reduction in fatigue levels over ve consecutive days, it is
possible that over a longer period
of time this would have translated
into a signicant improvement in
productivity, she said.
Dorothy Dunlop, a professor
of medicine at Northwestern
University Feinberg School of
Medicine, said the study was a
wake-up call about the importance of physical activity for
health, though too small to gauge
productivity or concentration.
I think this is a promising
study which adds important evidence supporting the benets of
reduced sedentary behavior, said
Dunlop, who wasnt involved in the
research. To my knowledge, its
the rst study showing well-documented reductions in sedentary
behavior are clearly tied to better
outcomes, she said.
The Holy Grail will be nding interventions that can be
sustained over a long period of
time and produce good long-term
outcomes . . . but this is a strong
starting point, said Dunlop, who
studies physical activity as a way
to prevent disability in older
adults.
I think the evidence were
starting to accumulate shows
standing is more benecial than
sitting and moving is more benecial than standing, said Dunlop.
We want people to get up and
move.
To get moving in an ofce job,
Dunlop suggested also walking
over to talk to colleagues rather
than emailing, taking stairs
instead of elevators or standing
during a phone call or meeting.
Another small study of the
psychology of work environments
recently found that productivity may be enhanced in meetings
where everyone is standing.
The message for sedentary
workers should be to alternate
regularly between sitting and
standing across the work day for
health, Thorp said.
SOURCE:
bit.ly/1lWS4O y
Occupational and Environmental
Medicine, online August 28, 2014.
Reuters