Effects of load carriage on heart rate, blood pressure and energy expenditure in children

Abstract

Fifteen male primary school children, aged 10 years, were selected to carry school bags of 10, 15 and 20% of their own body weights, where 0% body weight was used as a control. Maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max) tests were conducted on a motorized treadmill using a continuous incremental protocol. During the load carrying test, subjects walked on a treadmill at 1.1 m s(-1) for 20 min at each load condition. Blood pressures were measured before, immediately following, and at 3 and 5 min after every trial. Heart rate and expired VO2 were recorded before, during and 5 min after walking using a cardiopulmonary function system. The results showed a significant difference in oxygen uptake, energy expenditure and the recovery of blood pressure rise for between 10 and 20% body weight load conditions. The carrying weight of a school bag for children could be recommended as 10% of body weight because it was not significantly different from 0% load in the metabolic cost.

Gait Parameters in School Going Children Using a Marker-Less Approach

“…Many researchers found that the average bag weight carried by the school children should not exceed 10% of the body weight 2,3,5,6 . There were 12,688 acute injuries associated with backpacks in the US 7 . The daily changes/adaptions in posture with the varying load may cause pain and musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among school children 8,9 .…”

“…The study consisted of 60 randomly selected school going male students (20 from each school and 5 from each of class 5,6,7,8). On the basis of questionnaire, only those students who had no history of orthopaedic, neuromuscular or cognitive disorder were selected.…”

“…However, an in-depth knowledge on local germplasm of rice could not be provided. Hence, various local rice germplasm studies have been taken up at the national or state level to understand the genetic diversity of rice in a particular area [4][5][6][7][8] . Molecular markers have been used as an important tool for assessing the genetic relations, identification and for the desirable genotype selection in breeding programmes and germplasm conservation 9 .…”

Effect of Magnitude of Backpack Load and Duration of Carriage on Pulmonary Function Parameters among Urban Young Adults of West Bengal, India: An Ergonomic Study

“…Load limit of 10% -15% of Body Weight (BW) among children and adolescents for backpack carriage is acceptable according to physiological data [5,6]. Load carriage has been observed to affect physiological parameters like heart rate, blood pressure and energy expenditure among children [7]. Literature survey revealed that significant amount of work has already been done to show relationship between backpack carriage and lung function parameters among children and adolescents but has not been explicitly studied among young adults [8].…”

“…Lung function is related with oxygen uptake and hence with the energy expenditure [7] thus lung function is a vital physiological parameter which governs the cumulative stress on the body. Heavy load placed near trunk affects lung function and reduction in lung function is dependent on the percentage of load.…”