Pregnant women waddle

I wonder why that is; could it have something to do with carrying inside their bodies? Here in Edmonton, women are able to waddle without being pregnant; they're just plain fat.

As reported by Unity Blott (!) of the London Daily Mail, July 3, 2016:

Women really do 'waddle' like penguins when they are pregnant, according to new research.

The unique way that mums-to-be walk has been measured for the first time thanks to a sophisticated 3D motion capture system that is used in Lord of the Rings and other CGI blockbusters.

It has allowed scientists to study how women are forced to adjust their everyday movements, from getting up from a chair to changing direction while walking.

After filming mums-to-be at various stages of pregnancy, they found that baby bumps can change a woman's gait as early as in the first trimester.

The researchers also found that accidental falls cause up to a quarter of all trauma injuries during pregnancy, and that expectant mothers have the same level of risk as a 70-year-old woman.

Hiroshima University's Professor Koichi Shinkoda, who conducted the research, said: 'Biomechanics studies like ours, (looking at) how humans move, are valuable for many things like making our built environments safer or designing mobility skills.'

The study is the first of its kind; previous body scan analysis has almost exclusively focused on men of European descent.

One study in 1996 looked at pregnant women in Canada; however, the imaging technology available at the time means the data is now considered outdated.

Yasuyo Sunaga, a doctoral student in Professor Shinkoda's lab, explained: 'Prior to our study, there were almost no theory-supported models of the movement of pregnant women.

'This model is just the start of our goal of contributing to a safe and comfortable life before and after childbirth for pregnant women.'

3D motion capture is use to bring movies like Avatar to life, and now it has shed light on the precise movements of pregnant women such as standing up, turning, walking and even carrying a light load. Special flooring was also used to measure the force of their steps.

The team brought eight women into the lab at three different times during their pregnancy, as well as seven non-pregnant women, and used infrared cameras to record their movements.

After computer analysis, the researchers created virtual models to represent the average pregnant woman.

The model confirms scientists' current understanding of why pregnant women walk differently; even during the first trimester, their centre of mass is further forward, they lean backwards while standing, and they bend their hips less while walking.

This combination can cause them to trip over their toes and more easily lose their balance.

Computer models like this allow researchers to study the limits of what type of movements are safe without putting any real participants in dangerous situations.

Yasuyo Sunaga added: 'We want to find the ideal way for new mothers to carry their baby, what exercises are most effective to return to non pregnant fitness, and what physical postures are best for work in the home or office.

'Now that we have the appropriate data, we hope to apply our model and make it possible to problem-solve these concerns of daily life.'

The study has been published online in the journal Applied Ergonomics.

Click on the link for the abstract to the original article, Biomechanics of rising from a chair and walking in pregnant women by Yasuyo Sunaga, Masaya Anan, Koichi Shinkoda, Applied Ergonomics, Volume 44, Issue 5, September 2013, pp. 792-798.

"Real" men don't like to go to the doctor...

...which is why we die younger than women, as reported by Agence France-Presse/Relaxnews, March 24, 2016:

A newly published American psychological study has set out to investigate whether male life expectancy -- which is shorter than female life expectancy by an average of five years -- could be affected by social and psychological factors like choice of doctor and honesty.

"Why do men die earlier than women?" That's the question Diana Sanchez, associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University in the USA and doctoral student Mary Himmelstein, set out to answer in a recent study published in the Preventive Medicine journal and the Journal of Health Psychology.

They found that men who had traditional beliefs about masculinity -- such as showing bravery, courage and emotional restraint -- were more likely to ignore their health problems or delay acting on them.

The pair studied a group of 250 men, who were given a questionnaire designed to gauge their ideas about manhood and their preferences when choosing a doctor.

The results showed that participants with the highest scores on the masculinity scale were more likely to choose a male doctor, assuming them to be more competent that their female counterparts.

The scientists then recruited 250 university students and gave them a similar questionnaire. Each participant was also interviewed about their health by male and female medical or nursing students.

Paradoxically, the higher they scored on the masculinity scale, the less likely they were to talk openly about their symptoms and current health problems with male doctors. "That's because they don't want to show weakness or dependence to another man, including a male doctor," explains Diana Sanchez.

Ironically, this same group of volunteers was found to be more honest about their medical symptoms with female doctors, the authors found.

The pair published similar findings in 2014 in the Journal of Health Psychology. The study showed that men with strong, traditional ideas about masculinity were less likely to seek medical help, and were more likely to downplay their symptoms and suffer worse health outcomes than women or men who did not share those values.

"Men can expect to die five years earlier than women, and physiological differences don't explain that difference," said Diana Sanchez.

Click on the links to see the abstracts of the original journal articles by Mary Himmelstein and Diana Sanchez:

Masculinity impediments: Internalized masculinity contributes to healthcare avoidance in men and women, Journal of Health Psychology, October 7, 2014

Masculinity in the doctor's office: Masculinity, gendered doctor preference and doctor–patient communication, Preventive Medicine, Volume 84, March 2016, Pages 34–40