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Shortly after the start of the pandemic over a year ago, Americans began to joke about the dreaded ‘Quarantine 15’, fearing they would gain weight while locked in homes with stocks of food, glued to computer screens and watching Netflix.
The concern is real, but assessing the scope of the problem has been a challenge. Surveys that simply ask people about their weight are notoriously unreliable, and many doctor’s visits have been virtual.
Now, a very small study using objective measurements – weight measurements from Bluetooth-connected smart scales – suggests that adults under shelter-in-place control were gaining more than half a pound every 10 days.
That translates to nearly two books per month, said Dr. Gregory M. Marcus, lead author of the research letter, published Monday in the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open. Americans who maintained their foreclosure habits could easily have gained 20 pounds in a year, he added.
“We know that weight gain is already a public health issue in the United States, so anything that makes it worse is definitely of concern, and shelter-in-place orders are so ubiquitous as the sheer number of people affected by it. this situation makes it extremely relevant ”. said Dr Marcus, cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
While it’s nearly impossible to make generalizations based on the study – which included fewer than 300 people scattered across the United States – all participants regularly tracked their weight.
Many of these people were losing weight before shelter-in-place orders were issued in their states, noted Dr Marcus. “It’s reasonable to assume that these people are more involved in their overall health, and more disciplined and on top of things,” he said. “This suggests that we might underestimate – that this is the tip of the iceberg.”
Being overweight has been linked to a higher risk of developing more serious Covid-19 disease, and the United States already has one of the highest rates of overweight and obesity in the world. Some 42% of American adults over the age of 20 are obese, as defined by body mass index, while 32% of Americans are simply overweight.
The risk of serious illness has also been documented in overweight or obese young adults. Many states prioritize overweight or obese people for vaccination, as well as those with other chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure.
The new study analyzed data obtained from 269 participants who were involved in an ongoing cardiology study, the Health eHeart study. They volunteered to report the weight measurements of the Bluetooth connected smart scales and weighed themselves regularly; the researchers collected 7,444 weight measurements over a four-month period, or an average of 28 weight measurements from each participant.
The group was by no means nationally representative, so the results are not generalizable: about three-quarters were white and only 3.5% were identified as black or African American; about 3 percent identified as Asian-American. The average age was 51, and they were almost evenly split between men and women.
Participants came from 37 states and the District of Columbia. Researchers analyzed weight measurements taken between February 1, 2020 and June 1, 2020, to examine the weight changes before and after the issuance of shelter-in-place orders for each state.
While most participants lost pounds before the command was issued, their weight steadily increased at a rate of about six tenths of a pound every 10 days after the command was issued, regardless of where they were placed. were in the country and regardless of their chronic condition. medical conditions.
The locks have certainly had an effect on eating habits, on what people eat and how often they eat. But the restrictions also cut back on the mundane physical activity that is an integral part of daily life, the researchers said.
“If you think of people commuting, even running to the metro or bus stop, or walking into the post office to mail a letter, or stopping at the store – we burn a lot of calories in activities of daily living without exercise, ”said Leanne Redman, professor of clinical physiology at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, part of Louisiana State University.
His research had found that people ate healthier diets during the first few days of the shutdown, but were more sedentary.
An earlier study by researchers at UCSF looked at the number of daily steps, as tracked by smartphones, among nearly half a million people in nearly 200 countries. The number of actions taken by people declined by 27% per month after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.
Concern about exercise also extends to children, who are known to gain unhealthy pounds during summer vacation when not in school. The risk is even greater for Hispanic and black children than for white children, said Andrew G. Rundle, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, author of a recent article that feared that school closures would worsen race health disparities.
“We argued that not going to school, which we thought would last six months and last longer, was going to be like summer vacation, but worse, because everyone would take care of it. high-calorie food with a long shelf life. , and to stay inside and not to go out, ”he said. “Anything that makes summer unsafe for children would be magnified by the lockdown.”
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