Adults With Obesity Or Overweight

by Nayab T.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021 at 11:29 PM

Kinesiology and community health professor Dominika Pindus and her colleagues observed that adults with weight problems or obese who spent greater time in extended sedentary bouts had been greater without problems distracted.

Scientists used accelerometers to track day-by-day activity stages for a week in 89 adults with weight problems or obesity and, in a series of tests, measured their ability to multitask and hold their interest despite distractions. The study discovered that those who spent greater sedentary time in bouts lasting 20 mins or greater had been less able to conquer distractions.

As reported in the International Journal of Obesity, the research provides proof linking sedentary behaviors and cognition, stated University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign kinesiology and community health professor Dominika Pindus, who led the work on the paper.

“Several studies have examined the relationship between different types of sedentary behaviors such as TV viewing and cognitive functions in children and adults,” the Pindus stated. “The relationships they observed varied with the kind of sedentary behavior. This research generally measured sedentary behaviors throughout amusement time.”

The studies observed that frequently sitting for prolonged durations is connected to extended mortality and cardiovascular disease, the Pindus stated. People who do not have interaction in at the least 60 mins per day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and sit for 8 hours or greater have an extended health risk. Other research suggests that bouts of extended sitting lasting 20 mins or greater negatively have an effect on levels of blood sugar after a meal.

“Few studies, however, have tested the connection between extended sedentary time and cognitive features,” the Pindus stated. To deal with this gap in studies, she and her colleagues focused on the associations between objectively measured, extended sedentary time and cognition in adults 25-45 years old with weight problems or obesity.

“We know from previous studies that human beings with weight problems or obese don’t do as well on certain types of cognitive tasks,” the Pindus stated. “These tasks have interaction executive functions – cognitive functions which are vital for reasoning and staying focused on a goal.”

Some research has observed that long-term physical activity interventions in preadolescent children or older adults can improve those functions.

“But we don’t have a lot of information on how extended sedentary time is connected to executive functions in working-age people with weight problems or obese,” she stated. “If we will show how sedentary time and physical activity in normal life relate to executive functions in those individuals, we can be able to design extra targeted life-style interventions to enhance cognition in this population.”

The researchers gathered baseline facts for all participants, examined their cognitive ability, and calculated every person’s body mass index and percentage of body fat. Participants wore accelerometers on their waists during waking hours for seven days. They additionally finished cognitive tasks and measures of brain function in a laboratory setting.

“We used EEG recordings to measure electrical potentials which are generated in the brain even as participants engaged in tasks that challenged them to focus, ignore distractions and flexibly transfer interest between tasks,” the Pindus stated. A controller connected to a pc allowed participants to respond to issues whilst the rate and accuracy of their responses were recorded.

A statistical evaluation of participants’ sedentariness in terms of their pace and accuracy on a task that measures distractibility found a relationship between the two, the Pindus stated.

“Our key finding was that people who spent greater time in extended sedentary bouts had been more easily distracted,” she stated.

More studies are wanted to decide how the shape of a person’s sedentary time impacts cognition, Pindus stated.

“If you ensure to break up your sitting time with short bouts of physical activity, could that lessen how distracted you'll be?” she stated. “And if it does, what's driving this effect? This is something we need to explore.”