Energy expenditure of household activities and cardiorespiratory fitness in women with obesity

Abstract

Summary Patients with obesity experience difficulties in executing household activities. Our purpose was to compare the energy expenditure and exercise intensity of daily household activities and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) in women with obesity and normal weight women. Twenty‐eight non‐obese women (NO, 44.6 ± 7.2 years; body mass index [BMI] 22.1 ± 1.7 kg m−2) and 20 women with obesity (OB, 44.0 ± 7.7 years; BMI 33.4 ± 2.7 kg.m−2). Peak oxygen uptake (⩒O2peak), maximal heart rate (HR) and maximal cycling power output were measured during a maximal incremental cycling test to assess CRF. Oxygen uptake (⩒O2) used to assess CRF was measured during a standardized protocol that included ironing, cleaning floor and walking and climbing stairs. The intensity of the three household activities was expressed by the ratio between ⩒O2 during household activity (⩒O2‐activity) and resting ⩒O2, and between ⩒O2 during household activity and ⩒O2peak. ⩒O2 peak was higher in OB (1845.2 ± 290.5 mL min−1) than in NO women (1612.6 ± 250.9 mL min−1, P < 0.01). There were no significant differences for the ratio between ⩒O2‐activity and resting ⩒O2 between NO and OB women for any of the three household activities. No differences were observed either between the two groups for the ratio of ⩒O2‐activity to ⩒O2peak. In healthy women with obesity and normal CRF, physical activity (PA) may not be affected by energy need and intensity of household activities. In this way, these women can be motivated to maintain a high PA level contributing to lessen the cardiovascular risk.

Impact of Bariatric Surgery on Women Aerobic Exercise Capacity

“…Considering the inconsistent consensus on expressing VO 2 max in obesity, it remains difficult to quantify individual survival prognosis. It has recently been recommended to quantify VO 2 max in percentage of the prediction equations from Riddle et al [22][23][24]. Accordingly, the present subjects had an above normal cardiorespiratory fitness before surgery only mildly reduced after surgery.…”

“…VO 2 max was considered to be achieved when two of the following criteria were met: an increase in VO 2 of less than 100 ml/min with a further increase in workload, a respiratory exchange ratio (RER) greater than 1.1 or agepredicted maximal HR. The Riddle et al [22] prediction equation has been used to express the VO 2 max in percentage of predicted values as this equation has recently been suggested to be the best option to determine whether the aerobic exercise capacity is normal in women with obesity [23,24] The VT1 was determined by the V-slope when the angular coefficient of the VCO 2 vs VO 2 relationship increases. With this method, VT1 is considered to be a body massindependent parameter as VCO 2 and VO 2 are both corrected for body weight [25].…”

“…The increased VO 2 max corrected for body weight observed after bariatric surgery in the present and previous studies is highly dependent on body mass loss after the intervention. This information may be relevant in terms of exercise capacity in body weight-bearing efforts, frequent in daily life activities (walking, running) although a recent study demonstrated that the metabolic cost for walking or climbing stairs is identical in obesity and normo-weighted subjects [23]. However, treadmill exercise testing studies before and after bariatric surgery showed indeed reduced metabolic costs of body weightbearing activities with lower ventilation cost and a higher dyspnea threshold level [8-10, 17, 19, 29].…”