자연주의적 탐구조사(Naturalistic Inquiry)

Exploring pathways linking greenspace to health: Theoretical and methodological guidance.

Background: At a time of increasing disconnectedness from nature, scientific interest in the potential health benefits of nature contact has grown. Research in recent decades has yielded substantia...

https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2017_frumkin001.pdf

Nature Contact and Human Health: A Research Agenda

Researchers are increasingly exploring how neighborhood greenness, or vegetation, may affect health behaviors and outcomes. Greenness may influence health by promoting physical activity and social contact; decreasing stress; and mitigating air pollution, noise, and heat exposure. Greenness is generally measured using satellite-based vegetation indices or land-use databases linked to participants' addresses. In this review, we found fairly strong evidence for a positive association between greenness and physical activity, and a less consistent negative association between greenness and body weight. Research suggests greenness is protective against adverse mental health outcomes, cardiovascular disease, and mortality, though most studies were limited by cross-sectional or ecological design. There is consistent evidence that greenness exposure during pregnancy is positively associated with birth weight, though findings for other birth outcomes are less conclusive. Future research should follow subjects prospectively, differentiate between greenness quantity and quality, and identify mediators and effect modifiers of greenness-health associations.

/pdf/a-review-of-the-health-benefits-of-greenness-1cgfetnw4f.pdf

A Review of the Health Benefits of Greenness

For some time now councils with social services responsibilities (CSSRs) have been required to conduct surveys of user’s experience of social services. These have taken place nationally in three-yearly cycles. In 2002/03 the survey was for older people, in 2003/04 it was for younger adults with physical and sensory impairments, and in 2004/05 it was for children. 2005/06 marked the beginning of the second wave of the cycle. The mandate for conducting surveys of user’s experiences and satisfaction with services was first given in the white paper Modern Local Government: in Touch with the People (Department for the Environment, Trade and the Regions, 1998). In 2002 the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and SPRU developed a set of questionnaires for this purpose (Qureshi and Rowlands, 2004). Subsequent national surveys have drawn on this work to identify a set of compulsory questions for each round. User experience surveys (UESs) are regarded as an important part of the overall performance framework for social care and, providing councils with information about how they might improve services locally. Local authorities are required to submit their results to government bodies so that the relative performance of the CSSRs can be judged. This report is composed of five sections. The aims and objectives of the report are outlined in the second section and the method used to gather the data is outlined in section 3. In section 4 we report on the findings from the fieldwork and draw some conclusions and recommendations for the national survey in section 5. The topic guides for the focus groups and interviews are included in the appendices along with a brief discussion of the findings from the focus groups and a copy of the final extended questionnaire.

Younger Adults' Understanding of Questions for a Service User Experience Survey. Funded/commissioned by: The Health and Social Care Information Centre

Obesity can cause a decline in contractile function of skeletal muscle, thereby reducing mobility and promoting obesity-associated health risks. We reviewed the literature to establish the current state-of-knowledge of how obesity affects skeletal muscle contraction and relaxation. At a cellular level, the dominant effects of obesity are disrupted calcium signalling and 5'-adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activity. As a result, there is a shift from slow to fast muscle fibre types. Decreased AMPK activity promotes the class II histone deacetylase (HDAC)-mediated inhibition of the myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2). MEF2 promotes slow fibre type expression, and its activity is stimulated by the calcium-dependent phosphatase calcineurin. Obesity-induced attenuation of calcium signalling via its effects on calcineurin, as well as on adiponectin and actinin affects excitation-contraction coupling and excitation-transcription coupling in the myocyte. These molecular changes affect muscle contractile function and phenotype, and thereby in vivo and in vitro muscle performance. In vivo, obesity can increase the absolute force and power produced by increasing the demand on weight-supporting muscle. However, when normalised to body mass, muscle performance of obese individuals is reduced. Isolated muscle preparations show that obesity often leads to a decrease in force produced per muscle cross-sectional area, and power produced per muscle mass. Obesity and ageing have similar physiological consequences. The synergistic effects of obesity and ageing on muscle function may exacerbate morbidity and mortality. Important future research directions include determining: the relationship between time course of weight gain and changes in muscle function; the relative effects of weight gain and high-fat diet feeding per se; the effects of obesity on muscle function during ageing; and if the effects of obesity on muscle function are reversible.

The effects of obesity on skeletal muscle contractile function.

The aim of this study was exploratory and sought to examine the effect on blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR) and mood state responses in primary school children of moderate intensity cycling whilst viewing a green environment compared to exercise alone. Following ethics approval and parental informed consent, 14 children (seven boys, seven girls, Mean age ± SD = 10 ± 1 years) undertook two, 15 min bouts of cycling at a moderate exercise intensity in a counterbalanced order. In one bout they cycled whilst viewing a film of cycling in a forest setting. In the other condition participants cycled with no visual stimulus. Pre-, immediately post-exercise and 15 min post-exercise, BP, HR and Mood state were assessed. Analysis of variance, indicated significant condition X time interaction for SBP (p = 0.04). Bonferroni post-hoc pairwise comparisons indicated that systolic blood pressure (SBP) 15 min post exercise was significantly lower following green exercise compared to the control condition (p = 0.01). There were no significant differences in diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (all p > 0.05). HR immediately post exercise was significantly higher than HR pre exercise irrespective of green exercise or control condition (p = 0.001). Mood scores for fatigue were significantly higher and scores for vigor lower 15 min post exercise irrespective of green exercise or control condition (both p = 0.0001). Gender was not significant in any analyses (p > 0.05). Thus, the present study identifies an augmented post exercise hypotensive effect for children following green exercise compared to exercise alone.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/4/3678/pdf

The effect of green exercise on blood pressure, heart rate and mood state in primary school children.

Caffeine is an increasingly popular nutritional supplement due to the legal, significant improvements in sporting performance that it has been documented to elicit, with minimal side effects. Therefore, the effects of caffeine on human performance continue to be a popular area of research as we strive to improve our understanding of this drug and make more precise recommendations for its use in sport. Although variations in exercise intensity seems to affect its ergogenic benefits, it is largely thought that caffeine can induce significant improvements in endurance, power and strength-based activities. There are a number of limitations to testing caffeine-induced effects on human performance that can be better controlled when investigating its effects on isolated muscles under in vitro conditions. The hydrophobic nature of caffeine results in a post-digestion distribution to all tissues of the body making it difficult to accurately quantify its key mechanism of action. This review considers the contribution of evidence from isolated muscle studies to our understating of the direct effects of caffeine on muscle during human performance. The body of in vitro evidence presented suggests that caffeine can directly potentiate skeletal muscle force, work and power, which may be important contributors to the performance-enhancing effects seen in humans.

https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/bph.13187

What can isolated skeletal muscle experiments tell us about the effects of caffeine on exercise performance

The ergogenic effects of caffeine in human exercise have been shown to improve endurance and anaerobic exercise performance. Previous work has demonstrated that 70 μM caffeine (physiological maximu...

/pdf/the-effect-of-physiological-concentrations-of-caffeine-on-2npmd6aiga.pdf

The effect of physiological concentrations of caffeine on the power output of maximally and submaximally stimulated mouse EDL (fast) and soleus (slow) muscle

Trade-offs arise when two functional traits impose conflicting demands on the same design trait. Consequently, excellence in one comes at the cost of performance in the other. One of the most widely studied performance trade-offs is the one between sprint speed and endurance. Although biochemical, physiological and (bio)mechanical correlates of either locomotor trait conflict with each other, results at the whole-organism level are mixed. Here, we test whether burst (speed, acceleration) and sustained locomotion (stamina) trade off at both the isolated muscle and whole-organism level among 17 species of lacertid lizards. In addition, we test for a mechanical link between the organismal and muscular (power output, fatigue resistance) performance traits. We find weak evidence for a trade-off between burst and sustained locomotion at the whole-organism level; however, there is a significant trade-off between muscle power output and fatigue resistance in the isolated muscle level. Variation in whole-animal sprint speed can be convincingly explained by variation in muscular power output. The variation in locomotor stamina at the whole-organism level does not relate to the variation in muscle fatigue resistance, suggesting that whole-organism stamina depends not only on muscle contractile performance but probably also on the performance of the circulatory and respiratory systems.

/pdf/is-the-whole-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-evolutionary-59z40vr7e2.pdf

Jason Tallis

Papers

The effects of obesity on skeletal muscle contractile function.

The effect of green exercise on blood pressure, heart rate and mood state in primary school children.

What can isolated skeletal muscle experiments tell us about the effects of caffeine on exercise performance

The effect of physiological concentrations of caffeine on the power output of maximally and submaximally stimulated mouse EDL (fast) and soleus (slow) muscle

Is the whole more than the sum of its parts? Evolutionary trade-offs between burst and sustained locomotion in lacertid lizards.