By KELLY BRIGHT
BYU’s Human Performance Lab is looking for 250 women to participate in a new comprehensive study about the relationship between lifestyles and life-threatening diseases.
“This may prove to be a classic study,” said Dr. Larry Tucker.
Tucker said the study will be different from other studies because researchers have never before followed women’s lifestyles as comprehensively. The researchers will track, over a six-year time span, the precise measurements of women’s diets and their activity levels.
Studies in the past only looked at a snapshot profile of women’s health, and they relied on information from questionnaires, not scientific data, about their activity levels and diet, said Travis Peterson. Peterson is the student responsible for conducting the study.
“This study is different,” Peterson said. “We’re taking people’s nutritional information through a diet log for a week. We’re gathering information about their activity through an activity monitor. We’re taking precise measurements to determine their body composition, blood glucose levels, strength and endurance levels.”
By gathering extensive measurements of the women in the study, Tucker said the group hopes “to understand better about how major health problems interact and become interdependent.” For example, they hope to learn how obesity leads to higher cholesterol or diabetes, which in turn can lead to heart disease, Tucker said.
Researchers are hesitant to say too much about what they hope to find because they fear they may influence subjects to change their behavior that would bias the study. However, they said they hope to find definitive answers about what changes women can make in their lifestyles as they enter their aging years to prevent some of the major diseases threatening women.
Women involved in the study will go through a series of tests about every 18 months for the next six years.
“The ladies will come in two times the first time. We’ll show them how to weigh their food and give them an activity monitor to wear for the first week. We’ll give them a body composition test and ask them to get their blood drawn to see what their blood glucose and cholesterol levels are,” Peterson explained.
The body composition test is done by comparing a woman’s weight out of water to her weight in water. This information, along with her height and age, allows researchers to determine what percent of her weight is lean mass and what percent is fat.
The woman is lowered into a tank of water on a chair and asked to blow out all of her air. In order to get an accurate reading, all of the air must be eliminated because air, like fat, is buoyant and will be calculated as fat.
The women return one week later, Peterson said, to complete some basic strength and endurance testing. The endurance test requires the women to run on a treadmill to the point of exhaustion. They are asked to hold a tube in their mouths while performing the test, which feeds information about their oxygen and carbon dioxide levels into a computer.
In return for participation in the study, the women will receive the results of their test ana gift certificate to the BYU Bookstore. Various contributors are funding the study, but Tucker is hopeful he will receive some funding from the American Medical Association some time this summer.
Women who are interested in participating in the study must fit specific guidelines. The researchers are looking for females ages 35-45 who are past childbearing years, are nonsmokers, have no serious medical problems, are of average weight (not more than 50-60 pounds overweight) and can be committed to the study for the next six years.
For more information, contact the BYU Human Performance Lab’s Lifestyles Project at 378-4494.
