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May 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TUESDAY, May 8 (HealthDay News) — Now there’s another reason to hate
your commute.
New research has found that the longer your driving time between home
and office, the less likely you are to exercise, the more your waistline
widens and the worse your overall heart health becomes.
The findings come from a study of nearly 4,300 workers in Texas cities
whose daily commute times were compared to their odds of various health
risk factors.
“Previous studies have looked at sedentary behavior like TV viewing and
total time spent driving,” said study lead author Christine Hoehner, an
assistant professor in the division of public health sciences at the
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “But we wanted to
look specifically at commuting distance, since it’s an important part of
people’s daily routine.”
“What we found … is that long commutes can take away from exercise
and are associated with high blood pressure, higher weight and generally
lower fitness levels,” Hoehner said. “This may make a lot of sense,
because it’s extremely intuitive. But it nonetheless suggests that longer
commutes are really getting under the skin and affecting people’s
health.”
The findings appear in the June issue of the American Journal of
Preventive Medicine.
According to the researchers, the number of workers driving to work by
private car more than doubled between 1960 and 2000, increasing from more
than 41 million to nearly 113 million. The average distance traveled to
work also has grown in recent years, from nearly nine miles in 1983 to
more than 12 miles in 2001, the researchers said.
The new study focused on adult Texans living in either the Dallas/Fort
Worth or Austin regions.
No participant had a history of heart attack, stroke or diabetes, and
none were pregnant. All were employed in jobs that required a commute of
some kind.
At some point between 2000 and 2007, all participants underwent
comprehensive medical exams, including treadmill runs designed to assess
their heart and lung fitness. They also reported their level of daily
exercise during the three months prior to the study.
The team found that people with the longest commuting distances also
tended to exercise less than those with short commutes. They also had
lower levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, a higher body-mass index (a
measure of body fat based on height and weight), a wider waistline and
higher blood pressure.
Specifically, commutes of 10 miles or more were linked to higher blood
pressure levels, while those of more than 15 miles were linked to higher
odds of obesity and a lower likelihood of meeting public-health
physical-activity recommendations, the team found.
These trends didn’t disappear even after the researchers factored in
time spent exercising, which suggests that there is something about the
commute itself — outside of its impact in lowering exercise rates — that
harms cardiovascular health.
“This would suggest that drivers of long distances are burning fewer
calories overall, even if they are exercising the same amount as drivers
of shorter distances,” Hoehner said. “Although we didn’t measure it,
stress is also a possible mechanism at play, especially if commuters are
faced with travel congestion.”
What to do? “People can’t easily move closer to their job or change
their job … which means commuting by car is different from other types
of [unhealthy] sedentary behavior that are more modifiable, such as
watching TV,” Hoehner said.
“The message here is that people need to find creative ways to build
physical activity into their days,” she said. “And that could be as simple
as walking more throughout the day, whenever one can. That could be made
more feasible if offices were to encourage physical-activity breaks during
the day, and perhaps even flex time so people can drive to work outside
rush hour.”
One expert said attitude is important in increasing exercise rates.
For busy people, “the key is not being intimidated by exercise,” said
Dr. Bryan Henry, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of
Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y.
“No one after an hour-long commute home from work is going to want to
jump on a elliptical machine,” Henry said. “But just short exercise
commitments can work. That could mean walking farther from the parking lot
or taking a 10-minute walk here and there. It can easily add up to the
equivalent of a 40-minute brisk walk.”
More information
To learn more about getting exercise, head to the American Heart Association.
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