Raw metabolomics dataset for lower-body pressure ambulation pilot
Description
BACKGROUND • Current biases shared by both men and women favor overweight-obesity in Caribbean-Black, Hispanic and African women of reproductive age. In these cultures lean women are considered unfit for pregnancy and men with lean spouses are disrespected. Thus Black and Hispanic women are discouraged from losing weight. • Life-style interventions, diet and exercise, universally recommended in guidelines for treating or preventing type 2 diabetes and/or overweight-obesity (the dysmetabolic syndrome, diabesity) rarely achieve weight loss for periods exceeding one year. Both diet and exercise, individually or combined, trigger autonomic stress responses with the unintended consequences of perpetuating the underlying dysautonomia. • Prescribed doses of physical activity for weight loss are premised on improving cardio-pulmonary performance. Moderate-high intensity exercise without weight loss improves cardio-metabolic risk factors such as glucose disposal, dyslipidemia and hypertension, and prevents breast cancer, each prevalent in obese Black women, but optimal doses of physical activity and caloric intake are elusive. • Because of pain and discomfort, people with obesity do not engage in brisk walking, cycling or other lower-body exercises leaving them few accessible options to improve metabolic fitness. • We use a device that combines the fields of Energetics and Baro-physiology to enable low-intensity aerobic physical activity using a lower-body positive pressure anti gravity treadmill off-loading weight in subjects with difficulties walking. HYPOTHESIS We posit that a small amount of exertion while walking, a low-intensity physical activity of daily living within the “sedentary range”, i.e. below an upper threshold that triggers compensatory sympatho-adrenal mechanisms, might reduce cardio-metabolic risk enough to ameliorate or prevent diabesity without weight loss. • Our outcome measures are before-after changes in blood molecules with functions ranging from gluco-regulation (glucose tolerance using oral glucose tests) and inflammation to neuroendocrine (appetite, mood, neurogenesis). • We demonstrate in inner-city, non-diabetic obese, Caribbean Black women of reproductive age that painless weight-supported treadmill ambulation, well below guideline levels, improves cardio-metabolic fitness and insulin resistance without weight loss. We describe novel relationships between adipokines, and gluco-and neuro-regulatory peptides. These novel findings challenge current national and international exercise guidelines and suggest re-evaluating the necessity for weight loss to achieve metabolic fitness, demonstrating proof of principle in a specific subject group otherwise not inclined to exercise.