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 More than 9 in 10 adolescents fail to get the minimum 60 minutes of
moderate to vigorous daily physical activity recommended by the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), researchers report
in the journal Pediatrics.
“Physical inactivity is one of the major predictors of childhood and
adolescent obesity, the consequences of which increases incidence of
obesity as well as metabolic syndrome in adulthood,” said lead study
author Kaigang Li, a researcher at Colorado State University in Fort
Collins.
Childhood obesity has more than doubled in kids and quadrupled in
adolescents in the past 30 years, according to the CDC.
More than one third of children and teens are currently overweight
or obese, putting them at risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes,
bone and joint problems, sleep apnea and psychological issues such
as poor self-esteem.
To assess activity levels in teens, Li and colleagues assessed
exercise habits among a sample of 561 students in 10th grade at 44
schools representing urban, suburban and rural communities.
At the start of the study, when participants were 16 years old on
average, researchers asked them to wear activity trackers for one
week to see how much physical activity they got.
In 10th grade, students got about 27 minutes of exercise each
weekday, on average. This inched up to almost 29 minutes in 11th
grade, then dipped back down to 28 minutes for both 12th grade and
the year after completing high school.
Weekends came out even worse, with participants logging only about
20 minutes in all but one year of the study, when they achieved 21
minutes on average.
High school students who went on to a four-year college got more
exercise than their peers who didn’t continue their education, and
so did college students living on campus versus those living at
home, the study also found.
One limitation of the study is that it wasn’t a nationally
representative sample even though researchers selected participants
to include a variety of different communities, the authors note.
Researchers also didn’t have data on the health impacts of exercise
or assess how much additional physical activity some teens might
need to achieve health benefits.
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Still, the findings highlight the need for parents and school
leaders to build more opportunities for exercise into children’s
routines, said Dr. Ravi Shah, a researcher at Harvard Medical School
and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who wasn’t involved in
the study.
“Physical activity in the transition to adulthood is important in
all individuals, and patterns of activity start early in life and
may persist into adulthood,” Shah said by email. “Engagement in
school-based activities, community events, and supervised exercise
and weight loss programs for those children who need them will be
important in preventing cardiovascular disease in years to come.”
Exercise habits may be easier to solidify if parents start long
before kids reach high school, said Dr. Venkatesh Murthy of the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“The fact that these young people were more active on weekdays than
on weekends highlights the potential opportunity for parents to get
involved and encourage fitness activities over the weekend,” Murthy,
who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “Given that many
exercise activities are group activities, I worry that this is a
reflection of the fact that many parents are not placing emphasis on
their own fitness as well.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2dlMPJx Pediatrics, online September 26, 2016.
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