I-Min Lee got used to being the odd one out at conferences when she first began researching the role of exercise in health and disease-prevention.
“A lot of people in this area were athletes in college, or they played a sport, or were ballet dancers,” said Lee, a physical activity epidemiologist. She recalled standing around feeling awkward while colleagues discussed marathon times.
Working out didn’t come naturally to Lee. While growing up in Malaysia in the 1960s and ’70s, just about everyone she knew labored under the hot tropical sun or as domestics. They got plenty of exercise. Every parent’s fondest wish was that their children would get desk jobs in air-conditioned comfort.
“If you had a seated job, you’d made it. You didn’t have to work in the fields,” she said.
Now a Harvard Medical School professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor of epidemiology in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Lee got her desk job. But she’s also keenly aware of the potential drawbacks for health that can come from such a lifestyle.
