How Much Exercise Do Children Need?
The Amount of Exercise for Children is Still Not Determined
Sep 13, 2009
How much exercise do children need to gain the health benefits exercise provides. If you’re a parent searching for guidance, you’ll discover there are more than a few official guidelines for children’s exercise requirements from health experts. In fact according to Harold W. Kohl, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas, there are 27 sets of official guidelines.
Wow and even with so many sets of guidelines there is a challenge determining the proper amount of exercise for children. It appears there is to be a shortage of data for clarifying and prescribing the proper amount of exercise for children. It’s not for a lack of trying though, a few years ago the CDC convened a panel of experts to review published documentation in an attempt to make recommendations based on the data. The panel reviewed 850 published papers on the benefits of exercise for school-aged children.
The panel concluded children should get 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per day. The 60 minutes, says Robert M. Malina, a professor emeritus of kinesiology and health education at the University of Texas at Austin, is a gut reaction as opposed to a scientific fact. Currently the Department of Health and Human Serves (DHHS) is conducting their own study to answer the same question.
The Department of Health and Human Serves has determined that for every alleged benefit from exercise the evidence of the results was ambiguous. Even in situations where exercise produced results it varied among individuals. While some children gained benefits other got none. For example, (according to the study) where obese children saw declines in body fat, blood fat, and blood pressure, healthy normal weight children did not experience the same benefits.
Questions about whether exercise reduces depression and anxiety in children could not be answered either because studies were not large enough. It is not clear whether exercise has positive effects in the classroom either.
Experts agree there is still some work to be done to determine the formula for physical activity levels for children. In the meantime we know that children should participate in some form and level of physical activity. It is best to include your children in the decision making process, since the best form of exercise is the one they will do because they enjoy doing it. If you want your children to be physically active make sure they are having fun.
One thing we know for sure physical activity is an important part of a healthy lifestyle!
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." - Frederick Douglass
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