Understanding causes and consequences of variation in body composition, cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness

了解身体成分、心肺和肌肉健康变化的原因和后果

• 批准号: MR/Y009398/1
• 负责人: Snehal Maureen Pinto Pereira
• 金额: $ 227.61万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FY009398%2F1
• 关键词: Understanding; causes; consequences; variation; body

Physical fitness is essential for disease prevention, maintaining mobility and physical independence. So, to live long and healthy lives, we need to understand how to maximise and maintain our physical fitness for as long as possible. This is the main aim of my work. Physical fitness can be broken down into 3 main subcomponents: body composition, cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and muscular fitness. Body composition refers to the amount of muscle, fat, bone and water in the body. CRF refers to the ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to muscles during physical activity. Muscular fitness refers to the ability to do work against a load (and is usually judged by muscle strength). The components of fitness are affected by physical activity and they are associated with major diseases like cardiovascular disease and frailty. Body composition, CRF and muscular fitness develop and change over a lifetime, and, importantly, as adults, we can improve them to benefit our health.Our behaviours can affect our fitness levels, e.g., higher intensity physical activity is associated with better CRF. It is therefore unsurprising that government guidelines recommend doing moderate-to-vigorous intensity activities and strength building activities to improve/maintain our CRF and muscular fitness respectively. However, as a population when we think of physical activity, we tend to think about aerobic activities which mostly benefits CRF. Muscle strengthening activities are often forgotten. My work will quantify the extent to which CRF and muscle strength reduce health and economic burdens and will therefore help us understand the independent effects of these aspects of fitness on health.Body composition, CRF and muscular fitness are interrelated and can influence each other. But, there is still lots we do not know about these complex relationships and how they may change over a lifetime. For example, we do not know whether how long a person is obese is important for CRF. Understanding relationships with obesity in particular is very important and urgent, because compared with older generations, younger generations are accumulating greater exposure to obesity throughout their lives, and the impact of living longer with obesity is unknown. My work will allow us to quantify how, and at what lifestage, obesity is associated with CRF and muscular fitness. It could provide support for interventions earlier in life when behaviour changes (e.g., resistance training to increase muscular fitness), might be easier to implement.'Real life' is complex, and traditional research methods are not able to answer every important health related question. For example, 'how much of the effect of obesity on poor health could be avoided if everybody was strong?' is not a question that can be answered in a lab or by doing a trial. To be able to answer these complex but important questions, this study will use a mix of different methods and datasets. This approach is powerful because there is no single 'best' method or dataset to answer my questions and all the different methods and datasets have different strengths and weaknesses. By using a mix of methods and data, I will be able to more accurately 'triangulate' evidence, by collectively considering results, to identify causality.Using 5 different datasets I will address 3 knowledge gaps: (i) to understand the interrelations between components of physical fitness (muscular fitness, CRF, and body composition), how they affect each other and subsequently cause poor health; (ii) to improve understanding of influences over a lifetime on, and the development of, CRF and (iii) likewise, muscular fitness. My work will impact health policy by, e.g., promoting activity guidelines for specific types of exercise that should be encouraged at the population level and providing evidence for when an ideal life stage might be to promote maintaining high levels of CRF and muscular fitness for as long as possible.

身体健康对预防疾病、保持行动能力和身体独立性至关重要。因此，为了健康长寿，我们需要了解如何尽可能长时间地最大化和保持我们的身体健康。这是我工作的主要目的。身体健康可以分为3个主要的子组成部分：身体成分，心肺健康（CRF）和肌肉健康。身体成分是指身体中肌肉、脂肪、骨骼和水分的含量。CRF是指心脏和肺在体力活动期间向肌肉供氧的能力。肌肉健康是指对抗负荷工作的能力（通常通过肌肉力量来判断）。健康的组成部分受到身体活动的影响，它们与心血管疾病和虚弱等重大疾病有关。身体成分、CRF和肌肉健康在一生中会发展和变化，重要的是，作为成年人，我们可以改善它们以有益于我们的健康。我们的行为会影响我们的健康水平，例如，较高强度的体力活动与较好的CRF相关。因此，毫不奇怪，政府指南建议进行中等至剧烈强度的活动和力量建设活动，以分别改善/保持我们的CRF和肌肉健康。然而，作为一个群体，当我们想到体育活动时，我们倾向于考虑有氧活动，这主要有利于CRF。肌肉强化活动经常被遗忘。我的工作将量化CRF和肌肉力量减少健康和经济负担的程度，因此将帮助我们了解这些方面的健身对健康的独立影响。身体成分，CRF和肌肉健身是相互关联的，可以相互影响。但是，我们仍然不知道这些复杂的关系以及它们如何在一生中发生变化。例如，我们不知道一个人肥胖多久对CRF是否重要。特别是了解与肥胖的关系是非常重要和紧迫的，因为与老一辈相比，年轻一代在一生中积累了更多的肥胖风险，而肥胖的影响尚不清楚。我的工作将使我们能够量化肥胖如何以及在哪个生命阶段与CRF和肌肉健康相关。它可以为生命早期行为改变时的干预提供支持（例如，阻力训练，以增加肌肉健身），可能更容易实施。“真实的生活”是复杂的，传统的研究方法无法回答每一个重要的健康相关问题。例如，“如果每个人都很强壮，肥胖对健康状况的影响有多少可以避免？”这不是一个可以在实验室或通过试验来回答的问题。为了能够回答这些复杂但重要的问题，本研究将使用不同的方法和数据集。这种方法很强大，因为没有单一的“最佳”方法或数据集来回答我的问题，所有不同的方法和数据集都有不同的优点和缺点。通过综合使用各种方法和数据，我将能够更准确地对证据进行“三角测量”，通过集体考虑结果，确定因果关系。使用5个不同的数据集，我将解决3个知识差距：（i）了解身体健康组成部分之间的相互关系（肌肉健康，CRF和身体成分），它们如何相互影响并随后导致健康状况不佳;（ii）提高对CRF一生的影响和发展的理解;（iii）同样，肌肉健康。我的工作将影响卫生政策，例如，促进在人群水平上应鼓励的特定类型运动的活动指南，并提供证据证明理想的生命阶段可能促进尽可能长时间保持高水平的CRF和肌肉健康。