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"Playground awaits" Artwork
courtesy of Marcel
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Browsing thru the BBC website one
weekend this month, two articles caught my attention.
The First Article:
"Many Children 'Slower Runners
Than Their Parents Were" screamed an
article by Michelle Roberts, the BBC News online Health Editor. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24998497). It talks about the research by the University
of South Australia which was presented recently at the American Heart
Association’s annual meeting in Dallas, Texas recently. Australian researchers analyzed 50 studies on
running fitness conducted in 28 countries
between 1964 and 2010. More than 25 million healthy kids, ages 9 to 17, were
part of the studies, all of which gauged fitness in terms of how far kids could
run in a set time-frame or how long it took to run a set distance. According to the study, youngsters now are
about 1.5 minutes slower in a one-mile run than children 30 years ago. Across nations, cardiovascular endurance -
gauged by how far children can run in a set time - has dwindled consistently by
about 5% every decade, according to the findings.
The decline is seen in boys and
girls and across all ages from nine to 17 years, and is linked to obesity. "They're carrying too much body fat, making it "more difficult [for them] to
move through space," explains lead researcher Grant Tomkinson, Ph.D., a senior
lecturer in the University of South Australia’s School of Health Sciences.
Beyond battling obesity, kids also have to contend with an environment that is
toxic to activity. "It’s not that kid’s today can’t perform as well as say
their parents, but it’s just that they don’t perform as well," says Tomkinson,
citing lack of green space, suburbanization, changes in school-based physical
education programs, and too much screen time watching TV or playing video games
as likely contributors to diminished cardio fitness.
It is recommended
that children and adolescents participate in 60 minutes of physical
activity every day, the majority of which should be aerobic. Though that may
sound like a lot, the activity can be broken into four, 15-minute intervals,
for example. "Kids don’t have to do everything all at once,"says Tomkinson. "They can run, ride bikes, swim, play a game, do anything in bite-size chunks
of time and reap some benefits."
The Second Article:
"Exercise 'Boosts Academic
Performance' of Teenagers" is the title of the second article
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24608813). It is about the study by the universities of Strathclyde
and Dundee of about 5,000 children that found links between exercise and exam
success in English, math and sciences. It found an increase in performance for
every extra 17 minutes boys exercised, and 12 minutes for girls. Children who
carried out regular exercise, not only did better academically at 11 but also
at 13 and in their exams at 16, the study suggested.
Significance:
The relevance of these studies is
pretty much obvious for parents. We need
to invest some time and a little bit of money to encourage our kids to go for
more exercises of the physical kind rather than spend countless hours in front
of the IPad playing video games.
Improving fitness also improves self-esteem, improves mood, reduces
depression and even improves academic performance. It’s just a little
investment that can lead to fantastic changes now and in adulthood.
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