A number of obstacles may stand between a person and exercise, and hairstyles may be one of them for African-American women, according to a new study.
Researchers found about two of every five African-American women said they avoid exercise because of concerns about their hair, and researchers say that is concerning given the United States’ obesity epidemic.
“As an African-American woman, I have that problem, and my friends have that problem. So I wondered if my patients had that problem,” said Dr. Amy McMichael, the study’s senior researcher and a dermatologist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
McMichael and her colleagues, who published their findings in the Archives of Dermatology on Monday, said hair care can be tedious and costly for African-American women.
Rochelle Mosley, who owns Salon 804 in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, told Reuters Health some of her African-American clients come in once per week to get their hair straightened at a cost of about $40.
To find out if women were putting hair above their health, the researchers surveyed 103 African-American women who came to the dermatology clinic at Wake Forest University in October 2007.
They found that more than half of the women were exercising for less than 75 minutes per week, which is less than the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise.
That’s also less than U.S. women on average, according to a 2007 study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found about half of all U.S. women were exercising close to 150 minutes per week.
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