Impact of Dancing on Obesity Indices on Bengalee Female Adolescents of Kolkata

Abstract

Growth spurts generally occurs at adolescents when favourable conditions operate throughout the entire period of growth. This growth, especially in terms of body height, is a mark of a country's socio-economic improvement as well as a child's general condition or health. But along with this growth, the change in the lifestyle is resulting in excess body weight or obesity a serious public health challenge of the 21 st century. On the other hand, movement, a basic form of communication, through dance, helps in recreation and to express. In this backdrop, a study has been undertaken to observe the influence of dancing on growth in terms of body height and obesity indices like WHR, WHtR, BAI, BMAI, HAI, CI and CFR in Bengalee female adolescents of Kolkata. 33 adolescent female individuals, receiving dance training for a minimum period of 5 years and practicing regularly for at least an hour for 6 days in a week constituted the dancing group (DG). The control group (CG) had 37 female individuals of comparable age and socio-economic background, but not receiving training in any form of dance or exercise. It was found that the adolescent female individuals practicing dance regularly have significantly (P < 0.05) higher growth but significantly (P < 0.05) lower obesity indices compared to their age matched counterparts. It may be concluded that dance is a cost effective beneficial way of exercising; it can serve as potential tool for growth and optimum body composition in Bengalee female adolescents of Kolkata.

A Study to Evaluate Cardiac Strain in Male Agricultural Workers Engaged in Manual Ploughing Task in Hooghly, West Bengal

“…The indices of physiological strain of human resources engaged in manual ploughing assessed in terms of HR Peak (beats.min -1 ), NCC (beats.min -1 ), EEE (kcal.min -1 ) and ACC (beats.min -1 ). In the present study in transplanting (manual) [3,4,36], threshing (by mechanized thresher and electrically driven paddy thresher) [5,7,37,[38][39][40][41] and reaping (manual) [42,43], manual parboiling…”

“…Furthermore, during the paddy cultivating time agricultural workers has to perform a variety of tasks throughout the year even in a single day [3][4]. Agriculture being an open air avocation and a large number of human resources work manually in the agricultural field for considerable period of time every day, throughout the year, irrespective of variation in thermal environmental status [5][6].…”

“…above the recommended threshold values, mostly prevalent during 'Aman type of paddy'cultivation, is making the task strenuous for the human resources engaged in paddy cultivation[5][6]. Moreover, different tasks during paddy cultivating period -ploughing (dry and wet ploughing)[2,31,33,34,35]…”

A Study to Assess Relationship between Different Obesity Indices and Musculoskeletal Discomfort Score in Agricultural Workers in Southern Districts of West Bengal, India

“…Association between different obesity indices in terms of BMI, CI, RI, AVI, HAI and ABSI with CMDQ score have been presented in Figure 1. Obesity is a common condition and its prevalence is increasing worldwide [33][34][35][36][37][38] and our country is neither an exception [39][40].…”

Self-reported perceived stress, depression, and generalized anxiety disorder among Kathak dancers and physically active non-dancers of North India

“…As the opportunities for taking up classical dancing as a career have tremendously increased in India, it has led to an increase in competition ( Financial Express, 2019 ) which in turn has given rise to the notion of having an ideal body shape ( Karathanou et al, 2021 ) and may have made dancers more susceptible to perceived stress. Thus, in Kathak dancers, the physical, psychological, and esthetic demands (e.g., long working hours, low financial rewards; body shape concerns) imposed on them may have acted as stressors due to increased competition ( Chatterjee et al, 2015 ; Kulshreshtha et al, 2021 ). Further, in the present study, the high level of perceived stress among Kathak dancers may be due to the positive stress (eustress) which motivates them to perform better ( Franco, 2018 ) and thrive in a dance industry fraught with competition; however, more future research in this area is warranted.…”