Comparison of variations between percentage of body fat, body mass index and daily physical activity among young Japanese and Thai female students

Journal of Physiological Anthropology

Yoshiaki Sone¹  Luksana Makonkawkeyoon²  Porn-ngarm Limtrakul²  Tomoko Morinaka¹ 

[1] Graduate School of Human Life Science, Osaka City University, Sugimoto, Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka, Japan;Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand

关键词: Uniaxial accelerometer;    Physical activity;    Body fat percentage;    Body mass index;   

Others  :  861877
DOI  :  10.1186/1880-6805-31-21

 received in 2012-05-08, accepted in 2012-07-31,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

In our series of investigations concerning the causes of seasonal change in fat accumulation in young university students, we could not find any contribution of seasonal variation in the ratio of carbohydrate and fat metabolism to that of body fat percentage in Japanese and Thai participants. After our previous study, we examined the effect of daily physical activity on body fat percentage to look for the major causes of seasonal change in fat accumulation in young university students.

Findings

In this study, we measured participants’ (young Japanese and Thai university students) daily physical activity by a uniaxial accelerometer in addition to the measurements of body fat percentage and body mass index by a bioelectrical impedance meter. We found that there was significant and moderate negative correlation between body fat percentage and daily step counts among Japanese but not Thai participants. We observed significant, moderate and positive correlations between the percentage of body fat and body mass index among Japanese and Thai participants.

Conclusions

Daily physical activity plays an important role in the seasonal variation of body fat percentage of Japanese female students. Our present study also confirmed the importance of daily physical activity for controlling body mass index and for the prevention of obesity.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Morinaka et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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