MEDICAL RESEARCH SEEMS TO INTERSECT WITH COMMON SENSE A LOT.
Medical research seems to intersect with common sense a lot.
Just this week, scientists have reaffirmed that it’s a bad idea to smoke around your kids and dangerous for kids to get 20 percent of their daily calories from sugar, but that it’s a good idea for couch potatoes of any age to get up and move around every so often.
But don’t think that researchers are simply telling us things we should already know. Checking into the details can eventually help guide us to wiser health practices.
Start with the study published by an Australian online Jan. 12 in the European Heart Journal – although the data come from surveys of more than 4,700 Americans over the age of 20. Specifically, they all wore a motion detector on the hip for seven days to see how long they sat and how much they took a break from sitting.
The least amount of sedentary time for any subject was 1.8 hours a day; the most was 21.2 hours a day. The least number of times anyone got up per day was 14; the most was an average of 179 times a day (you can almost hear the couch springs groan).
What was telling, though, was the results of lab tests that went along with the monitoring. People who spent the most time sitting were most likely to have higher levels of blood fats, lower levels of “good” cholesterol and higher levels of a blood protein that signals artery inflammation. That held true even among people who spent some time each day exercising, but didn’t move much otherwise.
Those who did a lot of sitting, but also took a lot of breaks, had smaller waists and reduced amounts of inflammation.
Dr. Genevieve Healy, a researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia, said most of us typically sit for at least half the day, working, going to school and commuting and then in front of one or more screens at home. “But our research shows that even small changes, as little as standing up for one minute, might help to lower this risk.”
Then there’s the sugar. Another survey, this time of 2,157 teens ages 12 to 18, found that their average daily consumption of sugar or other sweetener amounts to more than 28 teaspoons, or 476 calories a day.
The teens consuming the highest levels of sweeteners had lower levels of good cholesterol and higher levels of the bad fats compared to those who ate and drank the least sweeteners, researchers at Emory University reported.
in the same issue of Circulation. The difference came to about 9 percent. And overweight and obese teens at the highest level of sweetener consumption also showed increased signs of insulin resistance, a sign of diabetes risk.
“Adolescents are eating 20 percent of their daily calories in sugars that provide few if any other nutrients,” said Jane Welsh, a postdoctoral fellow who led the study. “Sweet things have lost their status as treats.”
Welsh said that earlier studies show the biggest contributors of added sugars in teen diets are sweetened drinks like soda, fruit drinks, coffees and teas.
She said parents and teens need to pay more attention to the sweetener content on labels – and consider drinking more water.
(Contact Lee Bowman at BowmanL(at)shns.com.)