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
