How do you keep your child physically healthy?
Child obesity continues to grow concern as a public health issue around the globe. As obesity becomes a more prevalent risk for children, this makes you wonder, how can you keep your children physically fit? According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children are recommended to participate in at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity a day. More specifically, the CDC recommends that youth physical activity includes the following three types of exercise:
Aerobic: Most of the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity should be dedicated to aerobic exercises. Activities such as walking, running, or swimming are examples of aerobic exercises.
Muscle-strengthening: Partial of the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity should be focused on strengthening the youth’s muscles. Activities such as sit-ups, push-ups, or playing on playground equipment (doing monkey bars) are examples of muscle-strengthening exercises that do not require weights.
Bone-strengthening: Bone strengthening also should be included in the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity. Activities such as any running, jumping, or any sport-related activities are examples of exercises for bone-strengthening.
Additionally, 60+ minutes of exercise a day has be shown to be beneficial for children. In the FITKids Physical Activity intervention on adiposity (fat storage) in prepubertal children, they analyzed the possibility of exercise impacting fat levels in children, in which they found a correlation between physical activity and adiposity.
During their 9-month study, they randomly assigned participating children to an intervention or control group. The control group were able to continue doing their regular after-school activities while the intervention group had a 2-hour intervention for 5 days a week for 9 months. As a result of the FITKids intervention, which was designed to provide 70 minutes of exercise per day, they saw that the intervention group increased in cardiorespiratory fitness and decrease in fat mass and central fat mass (Khan et al., 2014). In contrast, the control group displayed no change in cardiorespiratory fitness while showing an increase in fat mass and central fat mass (Khan et al., 2014).
Overall, it is important to keep your child physically active to help reduce the risk of obesity.
References
Center of Disease Control and Prevention. (2018, November 14). Healthy Schools. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/physicalactivity/guidelines.htm
Khan, N. A., Raine, L. B., Drollette, E. S., Scudder, M. R., Pontifex, M. B., Castelli, D. M., . . .
Hillman, C. H. (2014). Impact of the FITKids physical activity intervention on adiposity in prepubertal children. Pediatrics, 133(4), e875. doi:10.1542/peds.2013-2246
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (2008). Chapter 3: Active Children and Adolescents. Retrieved from https://health.gov/paguidelines/2008/chapter3.aspx