Obesity Panacea

This Week: In Brief (June 6-12)

Posted by Travis Saunders on June 11, 2010
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While we regularly post lengthy discussions on Obesity Panacea, there are many research updates, news stories, videos, etc. in the field of obesity, physical activity and nutrition that we come across on a daily basis that never grace the pages of the blog. Most of these mini-stories we share with our followers on Twitter, and we encourage those of you with active Twitter accounts to communicate with us there to get real-time updates of all the stuff we are discussing (Follow Peter and/or Follow Travis). For those of you who shy away from Twitter, enjoy below the best mini-stories that we came across during the prior week along with links to the original source so that you can follow the full story.

  • Sitting takes a toll on the body (Available as Text or Video) <==A CBC report on the health impact of extended sitting, including a short quote from me and a look at my thesis work.  
  • Obesity prevention begins in the womb (Dr Sharma’s Obesity Notes). <== Dr Arya Sharma recaps some of the excellent research presented so far at of the Canadian Obesity Network Student Meeting in Ottawa.  I’m at the meeting myself, and it has been phenomenal.  Stay tuned for my personal recap next week.
  • Stranded in the desert with Jesus (PhD Nomads) <== Peter and Marina’s latest (mis)adventure in South America.

It’s time for me to get back to the conference – enjoy the weekend!  The next Obesity Panacea Podcast will go live on Monday – this time with special guest Jason Goldman of The Thoughtful Animal.  

Travis

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Comments

  1. #1 Larry Parnell
    June 15, 2010

    Indeed, physical inactivity is steadily rising in many societies. Interesting on how the line or selling point states something about increasing in efficiency or productivity. But we all tend to sit around too much for too many hours.

    We published a paper last year (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19380136) in which it was reported that a significant gene-physical inactivity interaction for HDL and some LDL measures exists for the LIPG gene. This gene encodes an important fat enzyme, specifically an endothelial lipase. In other words, one version of the genetic variant of LIPG does not show any ill effects of physical inactivity, while the other does but only when the level of inactivity reaches a certain threshold.

    While working on this paper, the phrase we used for physical inactivity was “screen time.”