Question 3
Why do you believe that there were more changes in waist circumference for women than men?
posted by shelby @ 3:58 PM
13 comments
ISU Dietetic Internship Journal Club
Objective: To become familiar with current scientific literature on a variety of nutrition topics and to gain experience in gathering, organizing, critically evaluating, presenting and facilitating group discussion of the literature and the implications to practice.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
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13 Comments:
As women progress through menopause, changes in body fat distribution may contribute to an increase in disease risk. Studies indicate that adbominal adiposity increases markedly after menopause due to declining sex hormones. Furthermore, middle-age weight gain depends on an individual's activity level. As an individual ages, health problems and injuries become more prevalent and can interfere with one's ability to be active.
Women may have experienced weight circumference changes more frequently than men because women go through menopause, which can cause shifts in weight from hormone changes.
Anna,
I forgot that hormone changes from menopause can decrease a woman's energy/activity level in addition to possibly causing weight gain. Good point!
Hormonal changes tend to play a role on how the body reacts the content of a diet and what it will retain. Women, in general, tend to have more cyclic hormones due to regular menstruation and even more so when menopause starts. This could cause the body to fluctuate on what it retains and lead to the more dramatic changes than with men.
Anna and Jen--
Looks like we were all thinking the same thing! I would also agree with Jen that activity decreasing with age for women is also a great point!
Both activity level and hormone level change in women as they age. Since this was an older population, it is likely that hormones had an effect on their waist circumference as well as decreased activity and a predisposition for women to carry weight in their waist over other areas of the body.
Anna -
I did not consider the change in body fat distribution with menopause. Good thought!
Melissa S.
Women have such dramatic shifts in weight distribution throughout their lives that this makes it much harder to assess them with this method and accounts for the changes seen here. Shifts in location of body adiposity start as early as adolescence with hips widening, continues through possible pregnancies which can have subtle or dramatic changes on a woman's long-term weight distribution, and goes on through menopause when hormonal changes can cause yet another redistribution of weight. An accurate baseline for measuring a woman's waist would ideally have several age stages that practitioners could refer to...
Hormones and menopause, good ideas ladies. I think another reason the waist circumferences changed more for women than men because women tend to eat or not eat more emotionally than men. I think women are more likely to gain or lose weight because of emotions which can cause a fluctuation in waist circumference. Also, women tend to carry their weight in their waists, thighs and butts, so if this is the first place for the weight to go on their bodies, perhaps it is the first place it is to leave when the women try to diet or exercise.
There are many reasons why there were more changes in waist circumference in women than in men. Based on the results of the study, it is apparent that food intake is more influential in women metabolically than in men. A combination of this, the fact that women tend to store fat more easily than men, women’s lower metabolic rates (in general), and the fact that women start to store more weight in their mid-section after they go through menopause, all contribute to their greater changes in waist circumference.
Because this population ranged from ages 50-64, many of the women in the group have likely been affected by menopause and shifts in hormone levels that affect their body fat distribution, causing more changes in their waist circumference than in the men's.
Steph,
I have actually heard the opposite about where women tend to lose weight first when they begin exercising. Unfortunately, although the first place females tend to pack on the pounds is in those lower regions, the first place the weight begins to come off is in the upper body regions. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
Steph N -
Yes! It sounds totally familiar! When I lose weight it comes off my upper body and back first instead of my midsection which is where I'd prefer the bulk of it to come off (sigh!). This may have an impact of studies like this...older women tending to hold their weight in that midsection.
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