A new study from the University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance (HHP) finds childhood poverty reaches into the lives of white, Hispanic and African-American young adult women, contributing to their propensity to be overweight and obese.
“We know that having a low socioeconomic status during childhood contributes to children being overweight or obese,” said HHP’s Daphne Hernandez, who also is an executive board member of the UH Texas Obesity Research Center. “We’ve found a connection between the long-term exposure to poverty during childhood and obesity rates among young adult woman.”
Hernandez examined how repeated exposure to poverty during childhood impacts a young adult’s risk of being overweight or obese. The results are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
She examined nearly 4,000 young adults born between 1980 and 1990 and the number of years from birth to age 18 that they were exposed to family-level poverty. The data came from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Young Adults files. She noted children who experience repeated exposure to family-level poverty generally reside in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities that are filled with stress.
“There are behavioral and physiological underpinnings associated with residing in stressful environments that are associated with weight gain, especially among women,” she said. “Further, disadvantaged neighborhoods are associated with more fast food restaurants, fewer grocery stores, lower levels of safety and fewer opportunities for physical activities. All of this can contribute to weight gain over time”
While the rate of obesity increased along gender and ethnicity lines for young women, the same was not true for young adult white men.
“Poverty is associated with adolescents gaining work experience as early at 13 years old. For boys, this may mean being involved in manual labor jobs which are related to greater levels of physical activity,” Hernandez said. “The higher level of physical activity may act as a ‘protective factor’ against obesity among white children who experience repeated exposure to poverty during childhood.”
Hernandez studies the impact of family dynamics on nutrition, health and obesity. She says this new research suggests that helping families get out of poverty may be valuable in lowering the percentage of white, African-American and Hispanic women who are overweight or obese in young adulthood.
“Although we are no longer in an economic recession, many families are still experiencing the lingering effects of the recession and living in poverty. Truly, helping families move out of poverty may improve the long-term health status of their children as they grow into adulthood.”
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Diet And Weight Loss News — Sciencedaily
— Courtesy “Science News Daily” (ScienceNewsDaily.com) <p>
Since CDCR’s website makes you stream a wma file which always doesn’t work for everyone, I ripped and re-uploaded a YouTube version. If you’re in the hiring …
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Where is the location of this course? Is this where a potential cadet would
take their pft? Or is this just for the sake of an example?
Great job Hester, your brother in arms. CSP-LAC In-Service Training
Department.
Great product. Wish hr monitor worked better,
Pros:
-looks good and is very comfortable. May be too large for many women however.
-the habits with daily/weekly goals and earning points to unlock more habits is definitely more motivational than the fitbit goals/software
-sleep tracking is the best I’ve seen. Shows details about sleep quality and type. Automatically senses when you are asleep and awake. No buttons to push
-watch feature is always on. You don’t have to push a button every time you want to see the time
-website shows a lot of useful ways to view your data
-very accurate. Seems like more accurate then the force was for counting steps
-able to tell if I’m simply taking steps, waking at an intensity to qualify for cardiovascular activity, running, or biking (real biking only-cant sense stationary biking) automatically. It then automatically records my activities that were greater than 10 minutes for record keeping as well as providing detailed data for review
-hr monitor is very accurate compared to manual pulse taking and with a pulse oximeter.
Cons
-hr monitor looses the ability to pick up hr with vigorous activity. The same thing happens with a pulse oximeter (uses similar optical technology). If you are moving to much it can’t consistently get the heart rate. It will pick up various points during your exercise which you can view on the website later. If you want continuous feedback on hr during exercise you will need to wear a chest strap type monitor. In general with non vigorous activity it does well but does loose contact occasional with other arm movements and walking as well. I would like to see this improved.
-doesn’t show distance traveled. I could see them adding this in a future firmware update hopefully. Should be a simple software code to convert your number of steps to distance based in guys height which they already have you input into your profile.
-can’t download your data outside of the website. Not everyone cares about this but some do. I have seem on the basis website that they are planning to make this feature available.
Overall I think it is the best fitness tracker currently available.
0
Was this review helpful to you?
|Feb 3, 2014 7:03:18 PM PST
We are glad that you are finding our Healthy Habits system motivating – it’s designed to help people set small goals that add up to big improvements in their health. This is an aspect of our system that we are very proud of because it delivers on our mission of keeping people engaged in their health.
Your feedback about our HR tracking is appreciated and we have passed your suggestion about distance traveled along to our product team. We are planning to make our data available to sync with other applications sometime this year, but haven’t published a specific timeline for this.
Glad you like your Basis band over your most recent tracker. We always appreciate your feedback!
Beware of what you’re getting for $200. Big disappointment.,
I had big expectations for the new Basis tracker. The B1, the previous model, was very good in some aspects, seriously lacking in others. The hope that the Carbon Steel (aka 2014 or B2) would address those flaws and be the gold standard of trackers is, sadly, an unfulfilled one. A much better band than the B1, but that – and the better looks of the carbon steel bezel – are about it. Better paint job and a deluxe Italian leather steering wheel cover – same car.
I have been sort of at the forefront of tracker development for the past year or so, being one of the first to acquire the Fitbit Flex (at CES 2013), and have the highest-rated review for the Flex: Fitbit Flex Wireless Activity + Sleep Wristband, Black. I very much like the way Basis is developing their tracker watches. Far superior to the bands from Fitbit, Jawbone, Nike, et al. Their focus on total integration (watch, pedometer/accelerometer, heart-rate monitor, calorie-burn count, etc.) is what sets them apart from their competitors.
But here’s the “however”: However, the Carbon Steel is simply not a success in that integration of sensors and data generation, for reasons set forth below. My bottom line advice is to wait for the next iteration of the Basis, or a more successful try from one of their competitors. If you can live with the flaws and shortcomings I point out and $200 is nothing to you, it’s certainly not a terrible product and may be worth a try. Personally, I would wait. The technology is evolving quickly in this area.
Basis and Fitbit have a lot in common in their quest to create the perfect tracker: they both focus on high-tech aspects of tracker development but in implementing the cutting-edge technology, they either neglect or push to the side simpler technology users want and often need. For example, the sleep analysis feature of the Basis and Fitbit trackers: it’s a gimmick of sorts as all it’s doing is registering movement. No movement equals restful sleep, multiple movements in a time frame equal restless, etc. As someone who has had this ability since I acquired the original Flex at CES 2013, trust me, it’s next to useless information unless you have a legitimate medical problem like sleep apnea. So, the Carbon Steel will “analyze” your sleep. Great. But it WON’T tell you something simple like the distance you walked or ran (yes, it does NOT have that capacity!)? Or simply show you your heart rate while you’re exercising like a $25 Timex heart-rate watch will (yes, you can NOT see your heart rate WHILE you exercise, only in later analysis)?
The lack of distance calculation is just mind-boggling and I don’t have a clue why it’s absent. As for the heart-rate, Basis can at least give us the capacity to add an HR chest band so that we CAN actually see our heart rate (the Basis monitors your HR from your inside wrist – facing the back of the watch – so I imagine there’s some problem acquiring real-time HR like a chest strap HRM can do). But millions of people NEED to see their heart rate, either to stay in a particular zone or, like me, to see that my HR doesn’t go past a certain level for cardiovascular reasons. Don’t market this touting its heart-rate monitor when it does NOT give a viewable heart rate. Basis thinks I’m going to wear ANOTHER HR watch that CAN show me my HR – AND wear the Carbon? Think again. Next time, try adding an option for an external HR strap. If a tiny app on my PHONE can do this (integrate a signal from a chest strap), I’m sure you can figure it out too, Basis. [Yes, I can run with my phone instead of a separate HRM watch but the whole point of the type of tracker watch Basis is trying to develop – and, yes, they ARE trying, don’t get me wrong – is to NOT have to use separate devices.]
As I state in the title of the review, just be aware of what you’re actually getting for your $200. For $75 you can buy a decent HR watch AND a decent pedometer and get SUPERIOR information about your exercise: you can see your heart rate, you can see your mileage, and much more (and you can feed the data into software for analysis). Basis will probably successfully integrate the high-tech AND the simple in the near future but I personally would not spend $200 on this. I would wait. If $200 is nothing to you, then fine: Basis is, in fact, far superior to Fitbit in many aspects, particularly in their effort to integrate heart-rate in the first place (which Fitbit ignores yet claims highly-accurate calorie burn counts – which is impossible without heart rate data).
Summer is about 5 months away (when people exercise most). The way trackers are being developed these days, I’m pretty sure there will be something superior to the Carbon Steel by then or a bit later. I would wait for something better…
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Was this review helpful to you?
|Feb 3, 2014 7:00:19 PM PST
Integrating distance traveled and a chest strap accessory are great feature suggestions. We’re always looking for ways to improve our feature set and we’ve passed along your suggestions to our product team.
Regarding our Advanced Sleep Analysis feature, while other sleep trackers might be solely motion based, Basis integrates other data captured from our sensors including heart rate data to provide a more detailed profile of the wearer’s sleep, including REM Sleep, Deep Sleep, Light Sleep, Toss & Turn, Interruptions and Duration (these are detected automatically without the need to push a button). We’ve partnered with leading research institutions: UCSF, San Francisco VA Medical Center and NCIRE to develop our algorithms and we will continue to refine those algorithms to ensure our users are getting the most accurate picture of their sleep.
While other devices might provide users with distance and heart rate tracking during exercise, we focus on data concerning other aspects of your health such as automatic sleep and activity tracking, and our Healthy Habits system was developed to encourage users to continually make small changes that improve their health over time.
As a minor point of clarification, there is no “B2” model. The 2014 Carbon Steel Edition is the culmination of incremental improvements made to the B1 band to improve the look, feel and fit.
Basis is always evolving and striving to provide our users with the most advanced health tracker. Thanks for your feedback – it’s an invaluable part of our development.