Energy expenditure and physiological performance of Sudanese cane cutters.

Davies, C. T. M.; Brotherhood, J. R.; Collins, Kenneth J.; Doré, Caroline J; Imms, F. J.; Musgrove, Jan; Weiner, Julia; Amin, Muhamad; Ismail, Hassan; Karim, Mutemainna; Omer, Anteneh; Sukkar, M. Y.

doi:10.1136/oem.33.3.181

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(13 reference statements)

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“…Good correlations have been demonstrated between a high VO 2 max and productivity in lumberjacks (Hansson, 1965), and East African and Sudanese sugar cane cutters (Davies, 1973;Davies et al, 1976). Productivity is thus affected indirectly by nutritional status through the in¯uence of the latter on height, body fat content and VO 2 max.…”

Section: Adaptations To Low Energy Intakes Ps Shettymentioning

confidence: 96%

Adaptation to low energy intakes: the responses and limits to low intakes in infants, children and adults

1999

Eur J Clin Nutr

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Reduction in energy intake below the acceptable level of requirement for an individual results in a series of physiological and behavioural responses, which are considered as an adaptation to the low energy intake. This ability of the human body to adapt to a lowering of the energy intake is without doubt bene®cial to the survival of the individual. However, what is more controversial is the view held by some that the body can metabolically adapt in a bene®cial manner to a lowered intake and consequently that the requirements for energy are variable given the same body size and composition and physical activity levels. Much of this confusion is the result of considerable evidence from studies conducted in well-nourished adults who, for experimental or other reasons, have lowered their intakes and consequently demonstrated an apparently enhanced metabolic ef®ciency resulting from changes in metabolic rates which are disproportionate to the changes in body weight. Similar increases in metabolic ef®ciency are not readily seen in individuals who on long-term marginal intakes, probably from childhood, have developed into short-statured, low-body-weight adults with a different body composition. It would thus appear that the generally used indicator of metabolic ef®ciency in humans, that is a reduced oxygen consumption per unit fat free mass, is fraught with problems since it does not account for variations in contributions from sub-compartments of the fat free mass which include those with high metabolism at rest such as brain and viscera and those with low metabolism at rest such as muscle mass. Metabolic rate per unit fat free mass thus, does not re¯ect true variations in metabolic ef®ciency and is due largely to variations in body composition. This ®nding combined with the evidence that behavioural adaptation in habitual physical activity patterns which occurs on energy restriction is not necessarily bene®cial to the individual raises doubts about the role of adaptation to low intakes in determining one's requirement for energy. The evidence is overwhelming that both in children and adults, changes in body size and composition as well as in levels of habitual physical activity may be the most important consequences of a lowered energy intake and cannot be assumed to be a part of a bene®cial adaptation that in¯uences energy requirements.

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Section: Adaptations To Low Energy Intakes Ps Shettymentioning

confidence: 96%

Adaptation to low energy intakes: the responses and limits to low intakes in infants, children and adults

1999

Eur J Clin Nutr

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“…A state of physical fitness, which requires training or regular work performance, is one in which aerobic power or VO, max is high. There is a close positive correlation between physical fitness and work productivity when the work involves strenuous labor (Davies et al, 1976;Spurr, 1984). It is also the case that the training or regular work performance leading to a state of physical fitness has a high cost in the form of food energy to fuel the work.…”

Section: Activity and Physical Fitnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human biology of African pastoralists

Little

1989

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

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Pastoralism in Africa is a subsistence tradition that has a long and complex history. During the course of several thousand years of nomadic and semi-nomadic herding practices, pastoral populations have successfully exploited African savannas and rangelands by maintaining highly mobile and low-density human populations and by maintaining symbiotic relationships between the people and their livestock. This review will cover the pastoralists' adaptations to their environments and the measures of health and adaptability of pastoralists within a biobehavioral framework. The measures that are considered are: diet and nutrition; infant, child, and adolescent growth; adult size and body composition; activity and physical fitness; reproduction; and disease. Several integrated issues (seasonal hunger, drought, sedentarization) are discussed as important areas for current and continued research. Monod, 1975; Weissleder, 1978). These population numbers, however, are declining because pastoralists' vast territories are dwindling as the result of expanding non-pastoral populations, ranching schemes, and attempts by national governments to sedentarize or settle the nomad. As pastoral populations decline and disappear, we will lose a significant amount of the cultural and biological diversity that enriches our species. The purpose of this review is to document some of the known biobehavioral diversity of existing pastoral populations while these populations still retain some of their traditional culture and subsistence. At the same time this will be done within the context of several major problems that pastoralists face in maintaining this pattern of subsistence. AFRICAN PASTORALISTS AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTTropical savanna ecosystems and grazing lands Throughout the world, pastoralists are distributed across lands in which a large proportion of the plant community is constituted of grasses, forbs, and shrubs. In the tropics, these grazing lands are identified as savanna. Situated between the moist, tropical forest and the arid and semi-arid desert zone, savanna lands cover as much as one quarter of the world's surface. Compared with other biomes, savanna lands have a pattern of plant productivity in which most of the biomass is available to fauna at higher trophic levels. Hence, savanna lands are often occupied by large populations of grazing and browsing mammals.

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“…A low weight-for-height (Brooks et al, 1979), small arm circumference (Wolgemuth et al, 1982), low body weight (Davies et al, 1976) or small stature (Spurr, 1987) were associated with a low productivity in workers engaged in heavy physical labour. A relation between an anthropometrical indicator and energy expenditure in general was proposed by James et al (1988).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The association between BMI and haemoglobin and work productivity among Indonesian female factory workers

et al. 1998

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Objective: To investigate the relationship between body mass index (BMI), haemoglobin (Hb) concentration and work productivity in Indonesian female industrial workers engaged in cigarette rolling. Design: Randomized-strati®ed, cross-sectional study. Setting: A clove cigarette factory in Central Java Province, Indonesia. Subjects: Two-hundred and thirty female cigarette-rollers. Methods: Anthropometric variables (height, weight, mid-upper arm circumference, BMI), body composition (lean body mass and fat mass from skinfolds thicknesses), Hb, work productivity (cigarettesahour) were determined. Results: Of the 230 selected subjects 40.4% were anaemic and 41.3% had BMI`18.5. Average production was 620 AE 86 cigarettesah. Productivity was positively correlated with work experience (r 0.214, P`0.01), lean body mass (r 0.183, P`0.01), height (r 0.150, P`0.05), Hb (r 0.141, P`0.05), and arm muscle area (r 0.120, P`0.05). Anaemic subjects produced 4.9% less (P`0.01) than the non-anaemic ones. No linear relationship existed between BMI and productivity, but subjects with a BMI`18.5, or`17.0, produced respectively 5.1% (P`0.05) and 6.8% (P`0.05) less than subjects with BMI between 18.5±22.5. Conclusions: Work productivity of persons with low BMI and Hb may be reduced. However, BMI was not a good screening tool to detect low producers. When using BMI`18.5 and a production`550 cigarettesah as cut-offs sensitivity (64.7%) and speci®city (55.5%) were low.

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Energy expenditure and physiological performance of Sudanese cane cutters.

Cited by 16 publications

References 19 publications

Adaptation to low energy intakes: the responses and limits to low intakes in infants, children and adults

Adaptation to low energy intakes: the responses and limits to low intakes in infants, children and adults

Human biology of African pastoralists

The association between BMI and haemoglobin and work productivity among Indonesian female factory workers

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