Children’s fitness levels and activities are declining around the world. Photography / 123RF
Today’s children are more crippled than previous generations, unable to bear as adults in a warm world. Nicky Pellegrino.
A heat wave that lasted through the summer in Europe,
harmed people’s health. Extreme heat can lead to a variety of stress conditions, such as heat stroke, which puts a strain on the heart, lungs, and kidneys as the body makes extra efforts to keep core body temperature at normal levels. .
High temperatures increase the risk of heart disease and death, and studies show that heat-related heart attack burden is likely to increase with 2-3°C of global warming. Therefore, as the planet warms, future generations need to stay physically fit and maintain optimal cardiovascular health in order to thrive.
Unfortunately, the opposite is happening, says cardiovascular and environmental physiologist Shaunda Morrison. Morrison completed her PhD at the University of Otago and is now based in Slovenia with her SLOfit, her longitudinal study of physical fitness and athletic performance in children.
“All schoolchildren in Slovenia are screened once a year in April,” she says. “They do a battery of fitness tests in gym class, so we have a lot of data.”
Children’s fitness levels and activity are declining worldwide, with a 2018 WHO report concluding that 80% of children aged 11-17 are not physically active enough. Evidence from SLOfit indicates that this decline accelerated during her Covid-19 lockdown.
“In this 30-year record of longitudinal monitoring, we found the greatest declines in children’s fitness, spanning all different factors, including aerobic fitness, musculoskeletal flexibility, and reaction time.” there was.”
Families may have gone for walks together in their neighborhoods during the lockdown, but the intensity of exercise the children were engaging in compared to the exercise provided by school gym classes and organized sports. It wasn’t enough to keep me physically fit.
Morrison, who is based in the Faculty of Sports at the University of Ljubljana, wanted to look deeper into fitness issues as global temperatures rise. In her review of more than 150 studies published in the journal Temperature, she found that the child’s aerobic fitness was 30% lower than her age-matched parents.
In this study, she highlights a study of 457 primary school boys in Thailand. The study found that an overweight youth was more than twice as likely as a normal-weight youth to have difficulty regulating body temperature when exercising outdoors.
Children’s thermoregulation is slightly different than adults. They sweat less, instead losing heat by increasing blood flow to their skin. When you’re physically healthy, your heart is stronger and can pump more blood with each beat, making your blood vessels more responsive and efficient, says Morrison. They are more likely to grow into healthy, active adults who can tolerate the temperature.
“But as the world warms, children are sicker than ever.”
How do you turn things around? Morrison has some ideas.
“We need to build society around the notion that we need to move our bodies,” she says. “This includes mandatory physical education classes in all schools taught by physical education teachers. Parents have a huge role to play, especially with children ages 3 to 10. Physical literacy needs to be a priority: if you know how to catch, how to run, you can jump, swim, perform basic movement patterns and you will have fun moving. If you don’t, you may be sitting for the rest of your life.”
She recommends no more than an hour of recreational screen time a day. Morrison doesn’t have a smartphone, and even on hot days this summer, her two young children run around during the cooler hours of the evening to ensure they’re getting enough fluids to prevent dehydration. I am making it available for replenishment.
New Zealand’s natural beauty puts it in the right place to have a positive impact on children’s fitness and future health, she says.
“But parents have to be very diligent to model the right behavior, and kids shouldn’t have smartphones.”
.
