Free-living energy expenditure measured by two independent techniques in pregnant and nonpregnant Gambian women

Abstract

Free-living energy expenditure (EE) was assessed in 37 young pregnant Gambian women at the 12th (n = 11, 53.5 +/- 1.7 kg), 24th (n = 14, 54.7 +/- 2.1 kg), and 36th (n = 12, 65.0 +/- 2.6 kg) wk of pregnancy and was compared with nonpregnant nonlactating (NPNL) control women (n = 12, 50.3 +/- 1.6 kg). The following two methods were used to assess EE: 1) the heart rate (HR) method using individual regression lines (HR vs EE) established at different activity levels in a respiration chamber and 2) the doubly labeled water (2H2(18)O) method in a subgroup of 25 pregnant and 7 control women. With the HR method the EE during the agricultural rainy season was found to be 2,408 +/- 87, 2,293 +/- 122, and 2,782 +/- 130 kcal/day at 12, 24, and 36 wk of gestation and were not significantly different from the control group (2,502 +/- 133 kcal/day). These findings were confirmed by the 2H2(18)O measurements, which failed to show any effect of pregnancy on EE. Expressed per unit body weight, the free-living EE was found to be lower (P less than 0.01 with 2H2(18)O method) at 36 wk of gestation than in the NPNL group. It is concluded that, in these Gambian women, energy-sparing mechanisms that contribute to meet the additional energy stress of gestation are operating during pregnancy (e.g., diminished spontaneous physical activity).

Energy requirements of urban Chinese adults with manual or sedentary occupations, determined using the doubly labeled water method

“…Relatively little information has been published on the energy needs of individuals living in non-Western countries. In six such studies of TEE determined by the doubly labeled water method published between 1988 and 1997 (Stein et al, 1988;Huss-Ashmore et al, 1989;Singh et al, 1989;Kashiwazaki et al, 1995;Heini et al, 1996;Haggarty et al, 1997), mean values for TEE in men and women were 1.95 and 1.72 times REE, respectively. These values are equivalent to the WHO estimates of moderate to heavy activities (1.78 -2.10 for men and 1.64 -1.82 for women).…”

Pregnancy-related changes in activity energy expenditure and resting metabolic rate in Switzerland

“…The energy cost of DIT seems to be unaltered (Nagy and King, 1984;Poppitt et al, 1993;Spaaij et al, 1994;Bronstein et al, 1995;Piers et al, 1995;Prentice et al, 1996) or even reduced (Contaldo et al, 1987;Illingworth et al, 1987;KoppHoolihan et al, 1999). The energy cost attributed to PA is generally low (Lawrence and Whitehead, 1988;Butte et al, 2004;Clarke et al, 2005;Lof and Forsum, 2006;Rousham et al, 2006) and tends to decrease as pregnancy advances (Lawrence et al, 1985;van Raaij et al, 1987;Singh et al, 1989;Heini et al, 1991;Forsum et al, 1992).…”

A simplified method for assessing physical activity level values for a country or study population

“…Contrary to several investigators who have suggested a revision of the recommended PAL (RPAL) values for adults, primarily because EE estimated by doubly labelled water (DLW) tends to be higher than these values (Haggarty et al, 1994;Durnin, 1996), the International Dietary Energy Consultative Group (IDECG, 1996) suggested the maintenance of the PAL values (Buyckx et al, 1996;Shetty et al, 1996) until more data are available for a reappraisal of the values (Butte et al, 1996;Buyckx et al, 1996;Dupont et al, 1996;Heini et al, 1996). Since data on EE of populations living in developing countries are more scarce and the DLW technique is still not feasible to be used in large-scale studies in these countries, the above two methods (factorial and PAL) are the only alternatives to estimate ERs.…”