Body and More
|
Inactive and In Trouble A new study shows that exercising in childhood is more than fun and games – it will impact the rest of your life 
Think your children are young and carefree? When it comes to heart disease, they might have just as much to worry about. In a study done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, researchers concluded that children leading inactive lifestyles raise their chance of serious heart disease by five to six times. And not just when they’re older – that risk can emerge as early as the teenage years. “This shows efforts need to begin early in childhood to increase exercise,” says Robert McMurray, professor of exercise and sports science at UNC. “Children today live a very sedentary life and are prone to obesity. Previously we didn’t know if low fitness levels were an influence.” Researchers studied almost 400 children between the ages of seven and 10 to investigate the early onset of metabolic syndrome, a name given to a group of medical disorders raising the threat of heart disease and diabetes. The children were examined twice – once in grade school and again seven years later – and researchers said adolescents with the syndrome were six times more likely to have had low aerobic fitness as children and five times more likely to have low levels of physical activity at the time they joined the study. “It’s obvious now that there is a link and this is something which we need to pay attention to by encouraging our kids to keep fit, or suffer the consequences later in life,” McMurray says.
|
|
|||||||||
