With summer vacation season upon us, I thought it would be a good time for some interesting reading related to topics were cover here at Obesity Panacea.  Here are 3 books that my wife and I have enjoyed recently.  I’ve linked to the book webpages, but I’d encourage you to buy them from a local bookstore if you can. iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared…

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Earlier this week ParticipACTION released their annual Report Card on the Physical Activity of Canadian Children and Youth (full disclosure: I’m on the Report Card Research Committee).  The full details can found here.  The Report Card itself is important, but not terribly surprising – Canadian kids still sit too much, and get too little physical activity (sleep is ok, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement there as well). Along with the Report…

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I see a lot of articles about the most “effective” or “efficient” form of exercise.  These often focus on pretty intense forms of exercise, like high intensity interval training (HIIT).  The focus of these articles are usually either that this type of workout will give you more benefits than your other forms of exercise (“using HIIT in resistance training could be the key to supercharging your strength gains“), or that the exercise will give you…

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For years, I’ve bristled whenever I hear someone say they are using pedometers to see if someone is “sedentary”.  This is because (in my world), we use the term “sedentary” to refer to sitting/reclining/lying down.  Traditionally, pedometers measured steps/day, and nothing else.  So they could tell you if a person was active/inactive, but didn’t tell us anything about how much time a person spent sitting down. However, over the past 10 years pedometers have gotten…

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A research project at the University of Western Ontario is currently recruiting participants.  To participate or find out more, please contact Stephanie Truelove (519) 661-2111, ext. 88938, email: struelo2@uwo.ca, or Dr. Trish Tucker, (519) 661-2111, ext. 88977, email: ttucker2@uwo.ca. Physical education class provides an ideal environment for students to be physically active; however, the instruction of physical education varies greatly between individual teachers across the country. At this time, physical education specialists (i.e., gym teachers…

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Today’s post comes from Rachel Colley (Senior Research Analyst in the Health Analysis Division at Statistics Canada), and describes a new paper released on April 18, 2018 looking at how time reallocations among sedentary behaviour, sleep, light-intensity movement and exercise are associated with health. The full article is available for free here. A brief summary of the article is also available here. This article has also been posted by the Sedentary Behaviour Research Network. Background…

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I am very passionate about active transportation.  To me, the benefits are obvious.  In the 4 years I’ve been at my current institution, I’ve either run or biked to work most of the time.  I live about 2 miles from campus, so everyday that I bike or run to work, I get about 4 miles of activity.  I do this year-round – mostly biking in the summer and fall, and mostly running in the winter…

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Over the past few years I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with a number healthcare providers to discuss the role and importance of exercise for their patients.  In those interactions, I’ve noted 2 common themes pop up on a pretty regular basis. They believe that exercise is important for their patients They are not comfortable prescribing exercise themselves, often because they worry that they may harm their patients It’s not hard to understand why healthcare…

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Earlier this year I posted details on a study in my lab, looking to validate new sedentary behaviour questionnaires.  We’ve had a very good response, and are now just 25 participants shy of the number needed for our statistical tests (thanks to everyone who has participated so far!).  I am therefore reposting the study details, for those who may have missed it.  If you would like to participate, you can sign up here.  Researchers at…

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Today’s post comes from researchers Salomé Aubert and Fabien Rivière, and describes their recent review of the content of sedentary behaviour questionnaires.  More on Salomé and Fabien can be found at the bottom of this post.  Their full paper is available for free here. Background Sedentary behaviours (SB) are defined as “as any waking behaviour characterized by an energy expenditure ≤1.5 METs while in a sitting, reclining or lying posture” [1]. Health effects of sedentary time have been…

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