Children Are Less Fit Than Before
Children are less fit than before and have less endurance in sport than their parents of same age- 30 years ago.. Cardiovascular health of children in the world is declining and this is reflected in sport.
A recent university study claims that, today’s children have poorer cardiovascular health than their parents at the time, due to an increase in their weight and obesity epidemic.
So health has been declining through generations? Yes, if we measured the physical performance, as did researchers at the University of South Australia. Their study, presented at the conference of the American Heart Association in Texas, reveals that many children in the world have poorer cardiovascular fitness than their parents at the same age.
This decline in capacity could indicate that their general health will get worse when they are adults. “If the children are less fit than before, there is a greater risk of developing health problems such as cardiovascular diseases later in life” says Grant Tomkinson, lecturer at the Faculty of Public Health at University of South Australia, and main author of the study.
Disturbing ? Yes, because cardiovascular fitness is the most important physical condition, it is “the ability to exercise for long periods, such as doing several rounds of the field running” say the researchers. To reach the results that they found, they analyzed 50 studies between 1964 and 2010. They observed 25 million children in 28 countries.
They were aiming to measure their cardiovascular endurance, looking at the distance that kids were able to run and the time they took. These tests usually last 15 minutes or cover distances of 800 meters to three kilometers. In the end, researchers found that children were running slower and for shorter periods than their parents ran. And this is without taking age, gender or country into consideration.
More specifically, the children are now 15% less fit than their parents were at the same age. “The two main culprits seem to be increasing weight of children and their lesser practice of prolonged physical activity” said Mr. Tomkinson. “30 to 60% loss of endurance can be explained by the increase in body fat” he adds .
In some parts of Europe, the situation doesn’t look as bad. For example, French kids’ ability decreased by approximately 2% per decade. This is significantly less than the decline elsewhere in the world for the same period.
To conclude, the researchers recommend at least 60 minutes of daily physical activity for children to work out the body’s major muscles.
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