AHA: Walking may lessen the influence of genes on obesity by half

[highplainsdem]

I'm going to post two links about this, the first for a Huffington Post article about the study, which I found via Twitter this morning:

Walking Could Lower Effect Of Genetic Predisposition For Obesity, Study Suggests


This is the link for the American Heart Association report:

Walking may lessen the influence of genes on obesity by half

From the AHA report:

SAN DIEGO, March 14, 2012 — Watching too much TV can worsen your genetic tendency towards obesity, but you can cut the effect in half by walking briskly for an hour a day, researchers report at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2012 Scientific Sessions.

“While previous studies have looked at how physical activity affects genetic predispositions, this is the first study that directly looked at the effect of the sedentary behavior of television watching on the body mass index (BMI) of individuals with a genetic predisposition to obesity,” said Qibin Qi, Ph.D., study author and a post doctorate research fellow in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Mass.

“In our study, a brisk one-hour daily walk reduced the genetic influence towards obesity, measured by differences in BMI by half. On the other hand, a sedentary lifestyle marked by watching television four hours a day increased the genetic influence by 50 percent.”

The study included 7,740 women and 4,564 men from the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Researchers collected data on physical activity and TV watching two years prior to assessing BMI.

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From the Huffington Post article:

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The researchers then scored each person on their genetic predisposition toward obesity, based on 32 established genetic variants. They found that with each gene that a person had, it was associated with 0.13 kilograms per meter squared in the BMI.

However, the people who exercised the most in the study had a lowered effect of the gene, at just 0.08 kilograms per meter squared, compared to the 0.13 kilograms per meter squared, according to the research.

On the other hand, researchers found that watching TV for 40 hours a week increased the effects of an obesity gene -- from 0.13 kilograms per meter squared to 0.34 kilograms per meter squared.

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This isn't the first study to show that exercise can have effects against obesity genes. Research published last year in the journal PLoS Medicine showed that just 30 minutes of exercise -- whether it be riding a bike or gardening -- for five days during the week can counteract obesity genes, TIME reported.

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