Some crazy study has come out that shows that to maintain weight, women need to
exercise an hour a day. Oh wait, no it doesn't! The study followed 34,000 women, who had a mean age of 54 at the start, over 13 years, and recorded exercise, start weight, and end weight. 1) There it is again:
correlation is not causation. Exercising a lot was correlated with not gaining weight (for women who had a "normal" BMI to begin with), but that could be because people who exercise a lot eat differently, have different genetics, or had different health habits early in life. 2) Did I mention these women started at 54? Gaining weight in the 13 years between 54 and 67 is
completely normal (whereas exercising an hour a day really isn't, especially for people in their 60s who may have health problems, see image). Your body needs fat to
synthesize estrogen, which is protective against osteoporosis and other diseases of aging. After menopause, estrogen produced by the reproductive system naturally decreases (why hormone replacement therapy used to be the norm), so fat cells may be an important source of ongoing estrogen support. We have
no idea whether weight gain after menopause is good or bad for you. We have no science that says this. These studies...oh man. As Gawker says, science is working overtime to
make women feel bad about themselves, but not much else.
***
Watch
this hilarious video where some bunnies wonder why Emergency Contraception is still behind the counter. Here's an
interesting take on it, including the very good point that taking pharmacists out of the equation eliminates conscientious objector concerns. (Hat tip Larry, who also pointed out that maybe bunnies weren't the most PC choice...) In other reproductive health news, New Jersey has decided to deal with its budget deficit partly by
cutting all state funding to family planning programs. Yeah, that sounds like it won't have any unfortunate long-term consequences.... Also, an interesting new study shows that
becoming a mother, not marriage, is associated with decreases in delinquent behavior. Finally, concrete evidence that
marriage doesn't save society.
***
Some folks at UMich have released a study that says women bid differently than men
because of their menstrual cycle. Despite the maddeningly cliched write-up, the research itself is somewhat interesting. It's well documented that women tend to bid in more risk averse ways (bidding more to ensure you win, for example), and the researchers found this effect. However, they found that this gender differential disappears during menstruation, when the lowest levels of estrogen and progesterone are present. As I said, I think it's interesting that hormones effect how people bid, but it
drives me crazy that men are considered the baseline for "normal" bidding and that people forget that men also have a hormonal cycle throughout the day that might very well affect their behavior! Elsewhere, NYMag is speculating whether Wall Street would be better
if women ran it. Yes, I definitely think there are some typically "female" characteristics that are
beneficial in business, but can we please stop acting as though all women are the same, and they all bring the antithesis of maleness to business situations? There's one quote in there from a Wall Street exec who says the women he's worked with on the trading floor "Never got ruffled, never got upset." Really? They all had exactly the same demeanors, and they all were never bothered by a bad trade? Maybe they just learned to
cry outside, like so many of us women have been told.
***
And finally, the NFL is at last
revising overtime rules that have caused the winner of the coin toss to win the game nearly 60% of the time since 1994. In the old rules, overtime was played as sudden death, with the first team to score a field goal or touchdown (yeah, right) winning. In the new rules, the team that receives the first kickoff (on offense first) cannot win by getting a field goal. They must either get a touchdown, or get a field goal and then give the opposing team one possession to win or tie. I think the new rules (which currently only apply to playoff games, but will likely be expanded) will make overtime more exciting, since before it always seemed like the team with the first possession had an unfair advantage. However, as the Trib points out, it's doubtful very many teams will go for that touchdown--most will either try to get a field goal and then stop the other team, or choose to kickoff, get the ball back, and win with a field goal.
[hat tips Larry, Woodstock, and
Katherine]
All I can say is excellent, CoLo, thanks for keeping me informed! I've always felt like science was out to get women--haha.
ReplyDeleteWell, I would say it's a better study than just asking people how much they exercise and how much they weight at one point in time. I haven't read any articles that actually mention these women started at a "normal" weight though which I think is important. Also, even if a hour of exercise is effective for preventing weight gain in middle age, that's a lot! Getting people to think it's worth it to exercise an hour a day is a harder sell than getting people to think it's worth it to exercise 20-30 minutes a day.
ReplyDeleteWhat blows my mind, is that this is almost 5,000 hours of exercise to prevent gaining less that 6 pounds! Seriously, I'll take the 5,000 hours, and, I don't know, write 6 books instead.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree, but even if you were willing to do the exercise, we don't know if it would work, or if it would be good for you in the long run. We don't know if it would work because normal body weight women who are predisposed to exercise might be predisposed to not gain weight (either through other behavioral channels, or biologically).
ReplyDeleteWe don't know if it would be good for you because we don't know what range of weight is healthy for older women to prevent osteoporosis. Exercise is a bit of a Catch-22, because while it has been shown to increase bone density, female athletes are often at the highest risk of osteoporosis due to having very low body fat levels and therefore low estrogen. As you grow older, body fat requirements may increase, and therefore some weight gain later in life might be adaptive. We don't have studies on this, so we don't know whether the BMI ranges (which are arbitrary to begin with) are appropriate for older adults.