[Newsbot]

Title: Nearly three-quarters of Ontario adults are obese or overweight
Category: Health
Posted By: Khar
Date: 2010-09-10 15:03:18
Canadian

[saturn_656]

Count me in the other 25%. Trim and fit.

[ASLplease]

so is that IN ontario or FROM ontario? Kenmore?

[DerbyX]

ASLplease ASLplease:

so is that IN ontario or FROM ontario? Kenmore?

How is your health out there on Cowtown? Ticker OK? Good solid bowel movements? Obesity has been a rising concern throughout Canada and the US. In fact companies are actually paying their employees to exercise because in the long run it saves their health plan money.

[ASLplease]

not sure. Albertans work more hours per week that most other provinces. For some, that means the get more exercise, and for others it means they get less time for themselves which could affect their exercise and eating habits in a negative way.

good question. i wonder if there is a correllation between hours worked and health.

[DerbyX]

ASLplease ASLplease:

not sure. Albertans work more hours per week that most other provinces. For some, that means the get more exercise, and for others it means they get less time for themselves which could affect their exercise and eating habits in a negative way.

good question. i wonder if there is a correllation between hours worked and health.

There is a concrete connection between stress and health so it depends on the job and the amount of stress.

I don't know about the "Albertans work more hours" thing. Can you cite a reference?

Also, working and exercising are 2 very different things. Hard work doesn't necessarily mean health improving cardiovascular effort.

Personally, I see mental health being a much bigger factor in good health (barring genetic disease). People with a negative outlook and problems with depression live shorter lives. Everybody has a relative who smoke 3 packs and day and drank a bottle of whiskey a week who lived to be 100. They did that because they were probably very positive and happy people. I have an uncle who is a diabetic and a drinker (plus a pot smoker) and he is in the pink of health. Nothing gets him down. He is always happy and jovial.

Sad sacks die young so for your health go out and rent comedies.

[ASLplease]

yep, moderation in almost everything. laughter is an obvious exception.

btw, my citation is my wife. thats good enough for me, but you want to contest it go ahead.

[Heavy_Metal]

PUT DOWN THE FORK!!!! FACE!!

[mikewood86]

BMI is not an effective way to categorize people as being overweight or obese. I would be level 25+ (overweight) for my BMI being 5'10 and 180lbs (currently bulking to 190lbs ) and I am no where near overweight since I work out 5 days a week. Muscle weighs more than fat, so that is a thing to keep in mind. Body fat % would be the more accurate way to go for this.

I'm not saying we don't have an obesity problem in our society because it is clearly a large (pardon the pun) problem, and one that needs to be addressed. The most interesting part is the astronomical cost in 20 years, and also how being overweight has become the norm in society.

.02

[ASLplease]

our problem goes well beyond obesity, obesity is just one condition that our acute care medical system is not designed to solve. many other treatable and manageable conditions have been shrugged of as the patiet's fault....things like high cholesterol, COPD from smoking cigarettes, type 2 diabeties, depression.....these are all seeming preventable conditions yet we dont have a community support mechanism in place to even treat them let along prevent them.,,,oops, i think im off on another rant about chronic diseases and chronic disease self management....sorry

[Khar]

DerbyX DerbyX:

I don't know about the "Albertans work more hours" thing. Can you cite a reference?

I can, although both are media articles and not jurored articles. One here, another here. While they do quote Stats Canada, there is always the chance that they may be incorrectly interpreting the results or that the results are not statistically significant (although with the given sample size significant results are more likely than if a reduced sample size has been used, and it sounds like the findings displayed come from the researcher's mouths). The study is currently a little over five years old, but the articles seem to imply and ongoing trend of increasing hours in Alberta.

From what I understand, overweight and obese people still make up about half the people in Alberta as of 2004. Obesity rates in children were far lower than national average at 22% (Warning: PDF File), although the Ontario article discusses adults so that's a bit beside the point. However that 2005 article about children does show that a greater proportion of the blame for those high obesity rates may lie with the adults, but possibly not enough to get it all the way up to three quarters. Of course, this all presumes that nothing has change with obesity rates in Alberta in five years in almost all the literature I've been able to find and provide here, so depending on the fluctuations maybe Alberta is close to the same rate -- but again, whether or not that short period gives Albertans enough time to chow their way up the obesity charts (or, possibly, dieting back down) is down to opinion. Personally, if the story is on Ontario, I'd say we're lower by a bit, as if Alberta managed that mile stone we'd likely have gotten the article first, and I have yet to find an article on the topic.

Albertans are also known to be generally younger, with Calgary having a very low rate. A quick search brought this up, and from what I remember reading in the Calgary Herald, the difference between the national age and the Albertan age has only widened since (although I may be remembering incorrectly). Quick back up link, although others would likely be available after a quick Google search -- it's a pretty well known fact in Alberta, if I remember correctly. Whether or not younger populations will be more active or fit is a debate.

[ASLplease]

thanks, thats interesting information. i suppose someone might come out of the woodwork to draw some conclusions from it, but I personally think any conclusions that suggest a significant difference would probably be incorrect.

[DerbyX]

Khar Khar:

I can, although both are media articles and not jurored articles. One here, another here. While they do quote Stats Canada, there is always the chance that they may be incorrectly interpreting the results or that the results are not statistically significant (although with the given sample size significant results are more likely than if a reduced sample size has been used, and it sounds like the findings displayed come from the researcher's mouths). The study is currently a little over five years old, but the articles seem to imply and ongoing trend of increasing hours in Alberta.

That is some damn fine research. Kudos. I'm hesitant to link such stats to health though. To many factors. IN addition, what work hours do they count? Do they include work after hours? Some professions (like business) often have workers who log uncounted hours on blackberries while off duty or on vacation. Wish I had a link because it was just in the news here.

I still maintain my position about job stress and health. The old adage is do a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Pretty close to the mark. Ontario has a high level of the stressful type of jobs (traditionally law, accounting, politics) which contributes.

I often cringe at studies like this though because often people look at them like "hah, our province is better on health" when really it should only be a personal thing.

Ultimately it does you no good if you live in a village of super healthy Swedish masseurs. Your own health is your own.

[Khar]

Generally, correlation between health and work stress have been easy to find over the years. There seems to be no end to the studies, news articles, advisories and such which announce that working a high stress job is bad for you, from increased heart disease for those in high stress positions to higher suicide rates for those doing jobs they dislike (like, for example, dentists). Tossing in a few of the words above bag tons of articles like this. The causal direction of health effects has also been thoroughly explored. Of course, you mentioned this already, but just restating it.

From what I get of ASLPlease's line of thought is that while causal factors move in one direction, the present level of jobs which have lead to long work hours generally coming from physically demanding jobs such as those in the oil fields (from the original two Statistics Canada articles which suggested that as a possibility for longer hours) and amount of people with the fitness and youth to be able to work longer hours without the deleterious effects of long term stress (since Ontario and other provinces do have an older population, from what I understand, so have likely accumulated more) would lead him to surmise the possibility of Albertans being more fit along the lines of work hours. Again, this is all up for debate, but I can definitely see the lines of though both yourself and ASLPlease have put forward here.

'Course, no doubt a ton of things effect health, as you mentioned, so I think you are correct. Whether or not Alberta's work hours is a variable which can signal their general health as ASLPlease mentioned (don't think he said they actually cause anything, it's just a sign of), including obesity/overweight persons, is up in the air, and no offense to folks but I don't feel like spending the time to do the regressions using StatsCan sources (and I'm not a statistician in the first place). Besides, I'm sure there's a ton of other quantitative/qualitative variables which would need to be involved which would make the error term quite substantial, as mentioned like I remember seeing in Labour Economics studies. You can and will find studies in various specific fields in regards to specific health threats and the relation to work hours which can discuss it likely due to ease of restricting variables, in my opinion, however these studies still find inconclusive results, like the one above did in some aspects of the study. More often than not, studies revolving around hours worked in general break down into how stressed someone is instead, and in the scope of an entire province versus an entire province I could not find anything in relation to a comparison in work hours from a verifiable source after a bit of searching for all professions, likely due to the plethora of inherent variances between professions, persons, and health issues or specific health risks from work places. Beyond aforementioned articles with narrow focuses of interest and articles on stress, I could not find much on that topic. In any case, now I'm off on a tangential ramble, so I'm going to cut myself short.

Edited third paragraph to flesh it out a bit.

[DerbyX]

People with pets live longer.

Get yourself a couple of frisky ferrets or failing that a good dog. No cats though.

Kick back and relax.