"Evidence Is a More Fruitful Approach for Advancing the Field Than Philosophy: Comment on Landi et al. (2016)" published on Apr 2017 by Human Kinetics, Inc..
Exercise habits, cardiovascular fitness, and selected psychological characteristics were assessed in a sample of over 200 men and women at entrance to medical school. Fitness was measured with a step test, and other variables were measured with standardized questionnaires. Anger (‘anger-in’) showed the strongest negative correlation with both exercise and fitness. Anger suppression, Type A behavior, and daily stress showed significant negative correlations with both exercise and fitness variables, although the strengths of these associations were uniformly weak. Associations of exercise/fitness with depression and total anger inventory were nonsignificant. Few gender differences were found. Both exercise and fitness showed similar patterns of association with psychological variables. Both exercise and fitness were associated with a style of anger expression that has been found to be related to cardiovascular risk in other studies.
Counseling by health care providers has the potential to increase physical activity in sedentary patients, yet few studies have tested interventions for physical activity counseling delivered in health care settings. The Activity Counseling Trial (ACT) is a 5-yr randomized clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of two primary care, practice-based physical activity behavioral interventions relative to a standard care control condition. A total of 874 sedentary men and women, 35-75 yr of age, have been recruited from primary care physician offices at three clinical centers for 2 yr of participation. They were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions that vary, in a hierarchical fashion, by level of counseling intensity and resource requirements. The interventions, which are based on social cognitive theory and the transtheoretical model, are designed to alter empirically based psychosocial mediators that are known to be associated with physical activity. The present paper describes the theoretical background of the intervention, the intervention methods, and intervention training and quality control procedures.
Creating is recommended to promote physical activity, but potential co-benefits of such environments have not been well described. An extensive but non-systematic review of scientific and gray literature was conducted to explore a wide range of literature to understand the co-benefits of activity-friendly environments on physical health, mental health, social benefits, safety/injury prevention, environmental sustainability, and economics. Five physical activity settings were defined: parks/trails, urban design, transportation, schools, and workplaces/buildings. Key findings: • A total of 418 higher-quality findings were summarized based on direction of association and quality of source. • The overall summary indicated 22 of 30 setting by outcome combinations showed evidence of co-benefits. • Each setting had strong evidence of at least 3 of the 6 co-benefits, and parks and trails had strong evidence of all 6 co-benefits. Thus, for each setting there are multiple features that can be designed to both facilitate physical activity and produce co-benefits. • All five physical activity settings could be designed so they have positive effects on economic outcomes, including increased home value, greater retail activity, reduced health care costs, and improved productivity. • Activity-friendly design in all settings had strong evidence of environmental co-benefits based on reduced pollution and carbon emissions. • There were many gaps in evidence of co-benefits in the schools and workplace settings as well the health consequences of environments that support active travel. • Overall, there was little evidence of negative consequences of activity-friendly environments. Implications: The most important conclusion of this review is that creating communities, transportation systems, schools, and buildings that make physical activity attractive and convenient also produces a wide range of other benefits for communities. Rather than thinking that designing one feature of a transportation system or school is sufficient, we encourage decision-makers and designers to consider how features in all settings can be optimized for physical activity and multiple other benefits. We urge mayors, other city officials, and staff in multiple departments to consult these findings as an aid in decision-making.
There is need to develop low cost, practical, and accurate measures of physical activity in children and adolescents, and self-report is a promising methodology for children that is applicable for large studies. The purpose of the present study was to assess the reliability and validity of several self-reports of physical activity. Subjects were 36 fifth-, 36 eighth-, and 30 eleventh-grade male and female students. The test-retest reliabilities were r = 0.77 for the 7-d recall interview, r = 0.81 for the Godin-Shephard self-administered survey, and r = 0.93 for a simple activity rating. For the former two measures, reliability improved with age but was significant at all ages, and for the last measure there were no age effects. Memory skills and obesity status were not related to the reliability of recall, but males were more reliable reporters than females. Validity of the 7-d recall was determined by comparing heart rate monitoring records with recalls of very hard activities on the same day. A correlation of 0.53 (P < 0.001) for the total group supported the validity of the reports. Validity improved with age, but validity coefficients were significant in all age groups. These data indicate that physical activity recalls of children as young as the fifth grade are of adequate reliability and validity to use in research on physical activity in children.
Psychosocial tobacco use prevention programs are based on the assumption that refusal skills training will have a suppressive effect on the onset of use by
: Primary care facilities may be a natural setting for delivering interventions that focus on behaviors that improve cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors. The purpose of this study was to examine the 24-month effects of the Activity Counseling Trial (ACT) on CVD risk factors, to examine whether changes in CVD risk factors differed according to baseline risk factor status, and to examine whether changes in fitness were associated with changes in CVD risk factors. ACT was a 24-month multicenter randomized controlled trial to increase physical activity. Participants were 874 inactive men and women aged 35–74 years. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three arms that varied by level of counseling, intensity, and resource requirements. Because there were no significant differences in change over time between arms on any of the CVD risk factors examined, all arms were combined, and the effects of time, independent of arm, were examined separately for men and women. Time × Baseline risk factor status interactions examined whether changes in CVD risk factors differed according to baseline risk factor status. Significant improvements in total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL-C, and triglycerides were seen in both men and women who had high (or low for HDL-C) baseline levels of risk factors, whereas significant improvements in diastolic blood pressure were seen only in those men with high baseline levels. There were no improvements in any risk factors among participants with normal baseline levels. Changes in fitness were associated with changes in a number of CVD risk factors. However, most relationships disappeared after controlling for changes in body weight. Improvements in lipids from the ACT interventions could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease in people with already high levels of lipids by 16%–26% in men and 11%–16% in women. Interventions that can be implemented in health care settings nationwide and result in meaningful population-wide changes in CVD risk factors are needed. The ACT physical activity interventions produced substantial improvements among men and women with elevated CVD risk factors. Keywords: primary care counseling, cardiovascular disease risk factors, physical activity, fitness, behavioral intervention
A survey was sent to 318 physicians in Monterey County, California, to assess their attitudes and practices regarding hypertension and cigarette smoking. After three mailings, 62% returned completed questionnaires. Eight percent of the respondents were smokers, 5% were women, and 34% were in primary care specialties. Older physicians and primary care specialists were less aggressive in their treatment of high blood pressure, but none of the assessed attitudes was significantly associated with treatment practice. Only half of the sample advised all patients to quit smoking. Physicians who doubted the effectiveness of their anti-smoking advice or who did not know what to say to smoking patients were less likely to provide advice. Most physicians felt that their smoking patients lacked sufficient motivation to quit. Programs to encourage physicians to increase smoking cessation activities should address these attitudes.
No abstract is provided for this article.
The public health community is becoming increasingly interested in the potential contributions of school physical education to child health. School physical education is seen as an ideal site for the promotion of regular physical activity because up to 97% of elementary school children participate in some sort of physical education program. For maximal public health benefit, school physical education programs should prepare children for a lifetime of physical activity. This public health goal for physical education may require some changes in current approaches. Physical educators are challenged to collaborate with public health professionals in developing and evaluating school physical education programs that will improve the health of the nation's youth.
Expression of the rat growth hormone (rGH) gene in the pituitary and in cultured pituitary tumor cells is regulated by glucocorticoid hormones. After co-transfer of cloned DNA containing the rGH gene with the herpes simplex virus (HSV) thymidine kinase (tk) gene into mouse Ltk- cells, rGH gene transcripts were detected in eight of fifteen tk+ cell lines. However, in all eight clones, the predominant rGH gene transcript was only about 0.75 kb, 0.3 kb shorter than pituitary rGH mRNA. The 0.75-kb transcripts, examined from one clone, L-rGH-4, lacked sequences derived from exons 1 and 2 of the rGH gene. Although transcripts larger than 0.75 kb were detected, the normal 2.2-kb rGH gene primary transcript was present only at very low levels. Nuclease mapping studies also failed to reveal transcripts initiated at the normal rGH gene promoter, but instead revealed transcripts with 5' termini arising within intron B of the gene. These data suggest either that transcripts arise from internal promoters within the rGH gene or that a transcript initiated upstream from the normal promoter was processed abnormally. Dexamethasone increased the levels of the 0.75-kb rGH gene transcripts about fourfold in all eight clones expressing rGH mRNA. These data suggest that structural elements important for glucocorticoid-mediated influences on regulation of GH gene expression are contained within the transferred rGH gene fragment and can function even when the normal rGH gene promoter is not used and the pattern of expression is grossly abnormal.
