Small Bursts of Exercise Can Make Kids Healthier

Small Bursts of Exercise Can Make Kids Healthier

Exercise is one of the pillars of good health. Your body was designed to move throughout the day and in many different directions. With well over 200 joints, your body can do amazing things. This can be an impressive display of balance and power with hardly any discernable effort. Unfortunately, while digital technology has improved efficiency in many aspects of your life, it has also encouraged less movement and more sitting/ sedentary lifestyle.

Many people sit between seven and 15 hours each day. Excessive sitting increases your risk of metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity.

Adults and children are facing these same challenges. The rising number of children suffering from obesity increases health risks and costs as the children grow to adulthood. In 2012, more than one-third of all children and adolescents were either obese or overweight.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), this number more than tripled from 1971 to 2011. This has lead to a staggering number of adults who are now at higher risk of multiple health concerns ranging from obesity to degenerative arthritis.

Contributing factors to declining health include poor food choices, lack of quality sleep and insufficient exercise.

Getting kids to exercise has become difficult over the past 20 years. What used to be common daily activity for children with their friends has turned into a chore. The effects of this difference in daily activities is showing up in the growing number of children suffering from obesity.

Recent studies have shown that children may benefit from very short periods of high intensity physical exercise. Researchers called the high-intensity interval training (HIIT).  They describe a more kid-friendly Fun Fast Activity Blast (FFAB).

The study evaluated 101 adolescents, measuring triglyceride levels, waist circumference, non-fasting blood glucose, c-reactive proteins, resting blood pressure, 20-meter shuttle run test and carotid artery intima media thickness.

The control group continued their normal activities, while the experimental group participated in three 20-minute high intensity exercise sessions per week for 10 weeks, involving an exercise of their choice from basketball, dance, boxing and soccer drills.

The results demonstrated benefits in both lower triglyceride levels and reduced waist circumference measurements. Researchers also found an unexpected advantage in the experimental group. These students increased the amount of physical activity by 16 minutes each day over the control group.

The increased activity during non-exercise hours suggested to researchers that increasing structured exercise may carry over to increased activity during unmonitored hours. The goal of the researchers in this study was to find an approach to exercise that was sustainable, practical and engaging for students.

Finding exercises your children enjoy may be one key to unlocking a desire to move throughout the day and enjoy the benefits that follow. Unfortunately, reduced time in physical education and recess time at school, combined with most school system's reticence to using stand up desks, significantly adds to the problem.

There isn't time to wait for your school system to change to impact the health of your children. Especially if your children are not getting copious amounts of physical activity at school, it's important to encourage them to be active in the hours they aren't in school and on weekends. Competitive school team sports are just one way of increasing movement and exercise. Consider joining your children after school for a quick 20-minute HIIT workout using an exercise tape, interval walking, biking, basketball, dance or any number of other activities. Children are more likely to do what you do and not what you say.

FFAB is a proven method of improving cardiovascular fitness. It's also important to incorporate muscle strength training.

Once done with your HIIT exercises with your children, spend a few minutes cooling down and stretching to reduce the potential for tight muscles. Flexibility is key to both strength and reducing the potential for injury. Just five minutes is all it takes. Consider yoga, martial arts or dance a couple times a week to increase flexibility and activity.

Your health is a complex combination of external forces such as nutrition, sleep, exercise and exposure to toxins, and internal forces such as motivation, hormones, enzymes, vitamins and neurological connections. Your internal forces are affected by external forces acting on your body.

Essentially, this means you become what you do each day. The more you move, the easier it becomes to move, and vice versa. Eating junk food, plastered in front of a computer screen and sleep deprived, it's difficult to scrape together enough energy to get up and get moving.

With better food choices and sufficient sleep, you and your children may likely experience better health, more energy, greater motivation to move and exercise and a better mood.

The more physically active your child is, the better they do in school.

Improved cognition may happen as a result of increased blood and oxygen flow to your brain, increased levels of norepinephrine and endorphins with a reduction of stress and an improvement of mood or an increase in growth factor that may help to create new nerve cells and support synaptic plasticity.

Chiropractic is great for kids to get them moving and keep them playing the activities they love. Consider bringing your children in for an examination and treatment to get their spine/ extremities moving optimally. This will ensure proper function and your children feeling great.

Dr. Stephen Kelly D.C.

Dr. Kelly practices at Family First Chiropractic located at 142 Erickson drive in Red Deer. Call us today to book an appointment (403)347-3261 or visit us at www.family1stchiro.ca