Thursday, October 20, 2011

Do We Have a Set Point for Exercise?

Does exercising at one point during the day make you less active the rest of the time?

The question of whether humans have an innate set point for movement, a so-called activitystat, is of increasing interest and controversy among scientists. One of them is Dr. Terence J. Wilkin, a professor of endocrinology at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, England, who asked himself that question a few years ago while hoping to learn more about the interplay of activity and childhood obesity.

Dr. Wilkin had outfitted about 70 children at three wildly different English elementary schools with an accelerometer, an electronic device that records almost all movement. One of the schools, a private college-preparatory academy with acres of playing fields, required an average of 9.2 hours of physical education classes each week. Another was a village public school, equipped with outdoor facilities and an established sports tradition, but requiring only 2.2 hours of P.E. each week. And the final was an urban school with limited playground options and 1.6 hours a week of P.E. The children wore the devices full time for a week on four separate occasions during the school year.

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