Stressful occupations (e.g., military, police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, social workers, airline pilots, etc.), are at the frontline of public safety, security, health, and overall wellbeing. Their jobs are physically and mentally demanding and highly stressful, all of which are well known to affect the endocrine system. In the long term, these factors affect their health and performance, ultimately impacting their job effectiveness and quality of life.

Insufficient aerobic physical activity (i.e., below the recommended minimum of 150 moderate min/week) and obesity are recognized factors that interact with physical demands, mental health, and stress of variety of occupations, especially of those recognized as highly stressful. In addition, insufficient strength training and low skeletal muscle mass lower the movement potential and increase the risk of sarcopenia, thereby reducing ones ability to perform and quality of life. They have compounding negative effects on occupational performance and health of working population in these occupations. On the other hand, sufficient physical activity and healthy body composition (i.e., low body fat percentage and sufficient muscle mass) mitigate these negative effects. Moreover, physical activity and exercise improve endocrine responses, which are a pre-condition for sustainable health outcomes.

To that end, this special collection focuses on mechanisms and endocrine system effects from physical activity behaviors, obesity, and stress on the health and performance of stressful occupations. We aim to have frontline research from around the world that would provide answers to inform clinical practice, field specialists, agency leaders, policy makers, and future research endeavors.

Our goal is to attract the research that provides the insights into mechanisms of occupational and behavioral influence on endocrine system and health of people performing physically demanding and stressful jobs. An additional goal is to provide guidelines and tools for facilitating healthy human-oriented working environments within these stressful occupations.

This research topic welcomes original research, perspectives, opinions, mini-reviews, and review articles on the elements described above. Manuscript themes may include but are not limited to the following:

• Endocrine system, health, and/or performance effects of occupational and clinical interventions.
• Epidemiological investigations.
• Socio-cultural influences at multiple levels (e.g., individual, organizational, policy).
• Innovative approaches to measure endocrine system effects from physical activity behaviors, obesity, and or stress.

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Frontiers in Endocrinology

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Impact