Jun

30

Exercise 'doesn't prevent childhood obesity' - Telegraph.co.uk(Childhood Obesity News)

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A study carried out on around 300 schoolchildren in Plymouth found that the amount of exercise a child does is not correlate with their Body Mass Index, a calculation of their height and weight used to measure if they are a healthy weight or not. Co-author Prof Terry Wilkin said the research has shown that there is a ten fold difference in the amount of daily activity children do, that the amount they do does not change over time and that children can be very active but still have a high BMI. He said the fact girls do less exercise than boys may just mean they are programmed that way and it was unfair that society recognises that amongst adult athletes, in that women are not as fast as men in most elite sports, but we do not recognise that amongst male and female children. The findings are published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood and tracked the long-term health of 300 children from 54 different schools around Plymouth who were all five years old. They had their physical activity levels measured for one week at the age of five, six, seven and eight by wearing a device around the waist and measurements were taken of their insulin resistance which can be a pre-cursor to diabetes, blood fat and cholesterol levels and blood pressure. Some children did as little as ten minutes per day at the recommended intensity of the equivalent of walking at four miles per hour which should increasing the breathing rate and cause them to break into a gentle sweat. Read Childhood Obesity

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