Sitting can drastically cut off years of your life. You could say that sitting “kills” you if pretty much all you’re doing is being a couch potato or working at a desk all day. More and more people are having sedentary lifestyles over time. Even children are affected. As technology has become more readily available, kids have started spending less time playing outside and more time inside using the computer, TV, etc. Having a sedentary lifestyle at an early age not only affects childhood health, but adulthood health as well.
The Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children Study (PANIC) from the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Eastern Finland shows that lower levels of physical activity, higher body fat content, and weaker physical fitness are all correlated with arterial stiffness in six- to eight-year old children. Arterial stiffness increases the pressure exerted on blood vessel (or in this study’s case, artery) walls. Arterial stiffness makes it harder for the heart to pump blood throughout the body than normal. This is a serious problem, since arterial stiffness usually doesn’t occur until some time in mid- to late-adulthood. On the other hand, it was found that children who have high levels of physical activity, low body fat content, and better physical fitness have more flexible arterial walls; people with more flexible arterial walls tend to be more flexible physically. In addition, having flexible arterial walls means that the arteries can expand efficiently to let more blood through when the heart needs to work harder. An important finding from the study is that in order to have good arterial health, physical activity is absolutely necessary.
Image Source: Digital Vision
The PANIC study also shows that risk factors for type two diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and premature death in adulthood already start accumulating during the early childhood years of an individual who’s overweight and unfit. The results indicate that changing a child’s mostly sedentary lifestyle could end up in lowering the risk of the child getting cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes, etc. later on in adulthood. Physical activity is essential to maintaining good health, throughout all stages of life.
In order for our future adults and generations to be healthy, we need to start changing our kids’ lifestyle habits now, and the study proves this point exactly.
Feature Image Source: Sit by Lee Thatcher
