To Your Health:

Physical Activity for Youth

By Nancy DiMarco, Ph.D.

Parents often make an incorrect assumption that being a teenager means being fit, especially if their teen is not overweight. But according to the U.S. Surgeon General's Healthy People 2000 update, only 25 percent of high school students take physical education classes and 43 percent of adolescents watch more than two hours of television per day.

This lack of activity gets worse as children get older.

Additionally, a child's academic potential may not be achieved because of a lack of exercise. Children need a break from their mental pursuits and young people who have good overall fitness tend to have improved mental alertness and perform better academically, according to the American Running and Fitness Association of Maryland.

Activity also helps a teen to maintain his or her weight, strengthens growing bones and muscles and develops flexibility that may prevent future orthopedic problems. It strengthens a teen's heart and lungs by increasing his or her ability to both use and distribute oxygen. And as muscles become strengthened, energy levels are increased, more calories are burned and disease risk is diminished.

The World Health Organization asserts that regular physical activity reduces the risk of dying from heart disease, reduces the risk of developing heart disease, Type II diabetes (90 percent of world's diabetes cases), colon cancer, may provide protection against breast cancer, reduces high blood pressure and osteoporosis, reduces stress, anxiety, feelings of depression, promotes social interaction and contributes to social integration.

A structured exercise program and training also can improve a teen athlete's performance. Typically, increased strength and size can translate into improved performance in a sport.

Exercise is important to prevent injury and extend an athlete's career. There are two ways that supervised exercise can do this. The first is by prehabilitating joints or muscles that are predisposed to injury. A young athlete may have a history of injury to certain joint or muscles or be in a sport that is prone to a certain type of injury (baseball pitchers and swimmers often suffer rotator cuff problems). Those joints can be conditioned to prevent injury. Secondly, rehabilitation of joints and muscles, once an injury has occurred, will help the damaged tissues become normal and reestablish the full range of motion.

What Can Be Done To Increase Physical Activity Of Teens?

• The number one thing parents can do to increase a teen's physical activity is to be physically active themselves. Positive role modeling sends a powerful message that being active is fun and important. You do not have to join a fitness club or participate in a sport, although those are both great choices. Games or activities the entire family can enjoy — a pick-up game of basketball, throwing a Frisbee around, hiking, biking on the greenbelt, inline skating or simply going for a walk and enjoying each other's company — models positive behaviors

• Helping children find an activity and getting them to stick with it is vital. The key is letting the child choose the activity, and then parents making the effort to make it happen. Parents who drive their kids to the child's activity have been shown to produce children who are much more likely to stick with a sport.

• Parents are not the only ones who can help. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is promoting a program to get children of all ages to start walking to school, since only one of 10 kids does so currently. A community-based walk-to-school program guide is published by the CDC to assess a community's sidewalk conditions and provides tips to keep kids safe while walking.

• Schools can restructure sports programs so they are not reserved only for the best-trained and physically mature athletes. All boys and girls should be encouraged to participate, and the practice of cutting children from teams should be de-emphasized. Adolescent health can certainly be the focus rather than the win-at-all-cost mentality that pervades sports.

Dr. Nancy DiMarco is a research professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, the nutrition coordinator for the Institute for Women's Health and coordinator of the master's program in Exercise and Sports Nutrition at Texas Woman's University. She can be reached at ndimarco@twu.edu.

For Further Information Contact:

Roy Kron
Director of News and Information
Tel: (940) 898-3456
e-mail: rkron@twu.edu