Race, Gender and Exercise Benefits

According to a recent study the health benefits of exercise may differ by race and gender (of course, they are narrowly defining health benefits to mean cholesterol and triglycerides stats).

Researchers have been tracking exercise and cholesterol levels in 15,000 African American and Caucasian men and women since the late 1980s. In all groups, adding an hour of mild exercise or a half an hour of moderate exercise a week increased levels of 'good' cholesterol, the heart-healthy HDL kind. However, the increased activity lead to lower levels of LDL ('bad') cholesterol only in women, not men. Additionally, the only group to exhibit improvement in all cholesterol levels were African American women. Caucasians who exercised more saw a decrease in harmful triglycerides, but African Americans didn't show the same result.

Although the most benefits were found among women, both Caucasians and African Americans (though defined by differing results), this is not to dissuade male readers from exercising. The reason why I'm profiling this study to discuss health reporting. So often, health or lifestyle journalist pick up a story on the news-wires and then interpret the results themselves, and rather simplistically, in a way that does not necessarily reflect the data. So, this journalist laid out what he/she gleaned from the study. Then goes on to tell us this: the method of research -- questionnaires -- means the results might not be entirely accurate.

So this is a self-reported study! Yet, I only get that at the end. How research is conducted and who interprets that research is crucial. Especially when you throw race into the mix (which as defined by Anthropologists is "socially significant characteristics" --there really is no such thing as biological race--we can share organs, blood, make babies, etc. --but there is socially constructed and culturally significant factors at work in terms of how human beings group themselves and live/eat/work. Science may be ideally racially neutral, but Scientists are racist by virtue of living in a racist society. I'm racist, I don't want to be, but by continually working on questioning my assumptions and challenging my ideas, I can work on it. To do a scientifically rigorous study that involves race as a factor, the methodology has to be sound, the interpretative matrix must be examined, and the way that the information is disseminated must be responsible.

I guess I just want a better job of health reporting than we currently get by the mainstream media--okay, I want a better job of rigorous reporting from the MSM in general!!! But in terms of health-reporting, its especially important to realize that studies differing in quality significantly and that sweeping statements need to be examined.