Here we are coming to the end of summer and back to school reminders are everywhere. Now it would be nice to think that the summer months had a large volume of exercise for our children. In some cases this is true, but often summer means more time for kids to watch TV or play video games.
With school starting, what can be and should be expected to keep our kids active and healthy? Over the years, there has been a mountain of research and substantial evidence that physical activity in children is as equally important as their nutrition and education as they grow. Physical activity plays a long-term role in the development of young children and teens alike.
Being active and getting enough exercise is so critical in children that a lack of activity during childhood can lead to some chronic health problems in their adult years. One good example of this came from a study that found low bone density in adults has been linked to a lack of bone development during childhood.
Many studies suggest that proper exercise along with appropriate nutrition starting in childhood and continued into adulthood has a direct connection to reduced instances of chronic inflammation, weight gain and metabolic disorders.
With P.E. or Physical Education in our schools scaling back due to budget cuts or made an elective, our kids are faced with less opportunity to stay active during school months. The exception is school sports programs, but keep in mind more kids do not take up school sports then do.
When children get moderate physical activity each day, their muscular systems will produce and release anti-inflammatory substances into their blood. As children put stress on their body through physical activity, they stimulate the production of what is called ROS, or reactive oxygen species.
What science and research have found is ROS interacts with various hormones, helping to balance and limit the amount of the inflammation in the body. The reduction of inflammation in young bodies influence their development and overall health positively. When children stay active, using their muscles for movement and lifting, it becomes so beneficial that two things will happen. It will promote proper physical development along with keeping inflammation in check.
As a parent, you should help your children build a foundation of regular exercise and start this as early as pre-school or when they are five years old.
Whether it’s youth soccer, running or just a daily hour of fun, this actual behavior will make a difference. Once your kids reach the age of 7 or 8, kick it up a bit with some sort of essential weight lifting activity to promote bone growth and muscle development. Keep in mind that kids get the same boost to their energy, stress reduction and better sleep as adults do who exercise regularly.
A lack of exercise and poor nutrition contribute directly to the development of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes. Once obesity and metabolic disorders start in children, it can follow your children as they age. Building health now builds health for the future, which is an excellent reason to ensure your children get plenty of physical activity and eat correctly.
So why are physical developments and the concern for inflammation so necessary to address? Inflammation is an immune and healing response. Our bodies have built-in systems to help treat inflammation as it occurs and physical activity is one of the mechanisms our body uses to flush out inflammatory problems.
When inflammation occurs, it is usually the body’s first response that there is some sort of health problem. If inflammation persists over an extended period of time, it amplifies, affecting your child’s proper development and increases the chances of chronic health concerns that may not show up for years.
Keeping your kids physically active starting from the age of 5 years old and up is far more critical than most parents realize. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans and here are their fitness recommendations for children and adolescents from ages 6 to 17: A total of 60 minutes or more of daily physical activity was recommended.
The guidelines state that the action should either consist of moderate to vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity and should include vigorous-intensity physical or strength building activity at least three days per week.
For younger children, the strength-building activity may include using playground equipment, climbing, or playing jump rope. For tweens, there are some great types of exercise including lifting relatively heavy objects or using body weight for resistance such as push-ups or gymnastics. For older teens, weight training, interval training and other more aggressive types of workout regimens are recommended.
Also, keep in mind the importance of resistance and strength training in children. Parents have long been told that younger kids should not strength train. I am often asked, “Can a child damage growth plates by performing resistance or strength training?”
The simple answer is no. Many studies have been done and concluded no defining data nor scientific evidence is explicitly supporting that children who strength train in moderation damage growth plates. Common sense is resistance and strength training should be at a level that matches their ability.
What should be expected is to keep your children physically active from five years old up until they graduate from high school.
Also, remember school programs are less focused on physical education, so stay involved with your children’s fitness. When it comes to our children, always remember that with any sport or exercise activity, moderation and common sense is the key to excellent results.
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Judd Jones is a certified primal health coach and fitness consultant. He can be reached at jjones@cdapress.com www.jhanawellness.com.
Aloha Kakou and Judd Jones,
This is an excellent, important, and necessary article, needed to be read and implemented by all parents, teachers, school administrators, and politicians.
I’ve heard so often the acronym, SWARE, which stands for that which needs to be used properly everyday. And this article by Judd covers one of the SWARE contents very well.
SWARE = SUN, WATER, AIR, REST, and EXERCISE. The 5 fingers in one of the gloves of HEALTH.
Pursuing Health, especially at children’s ages, is the very act of preventing Disease. Judd explained that very well.
Preventing Disease means not having to participate in what has clearly become HELLth care for too many. TV ADS for petroleum based medical drugs with many frightening toxic side effects including death, followed by more TV ADS by lawyers letting us know they will sue the drug companies for you; and the drug pharmaceutical companies so rich they seem to not even care what happens to the public. Nor does it appear do the doctors that prescribe those drugs. And look at our nation’s Opiate Epidemic brought about by over prescribing pain killers.
A bigger picture is that the world of medicine, Disease Care, has gotten itself so far out on a limb (yes an evolutionary limb of science), wherein they have run away from their job responsibility of Prevention, Education, and finding the Cause of the effects that are called disease. Falsely, like Fake News, misleading us to think that there is no known cause, or that they cannot find the cause(s), or there is no prevention of Disease, and the only thing available to the public is the $4 Trillion dollars a year Profit for Drugs and Surgery.
We need to ask, is this the best they can do, isn’t an Ounce of Prevention, still worth more than a Pound of Cure. Who told the medical industry that they have the right, in the face of the responsibility we have given them, to have abandoned Removing the Causes of Disease, making all effort for Prevention of Disease, educating us about Health via the acronym of SWARE, which is today’s word of the day as is child and youth and adult Exercise.
As an industry the drug companies in partnership with doctors and hospitals have abandoned us to already antiquated “modern” drugs and surgery, albeit drugs and surgery profits the medical industry the $4 Trillion dollars a year income.
There is only one alternative to Disease Care, drugs, and surgery; and that is Health by way of Health Care.
America spends just $600 Billion dollars a year on our Defense budget to protect our nation, as well, apparently, other nations we help.
Yet we spend $4 Trillion dollars a year insanely “fighting” disease, and almost not a penny on Prevention of Disease, nor on Health Promoting Care, nor on the educating the public on the Causes of Disease. That is the epitomy of “Bass Ackward”.
If you are Healthy you do not need Medical Disease Care, that is an OBVIOUS. So why aren’t we putting our $$$ where Health is? Why? Because we are putting on dollars on the promotion of, the cause of, and the perpetuation of Disease, wherein the industry that profits $4 Trillion dollars a year is so deep in a rut they are over their heads in the rut and no escape in sight. As a member of our society you are locked into Disease Care, that is all that is available. A Golden Train on a Platinum Track…only thing is it is going in the wrong direction.
For Health we need a handful of Basics, and Judd Jones explained one of them very well in his article…about EXERCISE.
There are other basics. Few people know that the Nervous System of all humans controls every cell, tissue, organ, and systems in our bodies, including our thoughts and feelings, etc., et. al. We as people in order to be Healthy must have an intact, structurally integrated, 100% functioning Nervous System without interference from the things that lessen its capability. More later.
Another Basic daily thing to Cause Health is feeding our bodies that which is Healthy.
Start with Live, Fresh, Natural, Chemically free foods. READ THE LABELS…!
Here’s 1 example of food to table to Disease.
You know when you look in the meat Dept at the grocery store and you see that nice steak with the delicious lines of fat running through the meat, they call it marbling.
Of course you know that the animal meat you eat is the muscles of the animal.
Of course you want the meat to be tender and marbled with fat, from an animal that was housed in a manner that they got little and probably no exercise at all. When was the last time you saw cows jogging around the pasture. HaHaHa…!
Well when you eat meat, hamburger same thing, after DECADES of eating the marbled meat, their muscles, so do your muscles un-exercised muscles, especially if you are an office worker, become marbled. But let’s not stop there, your Heart is a muscle also, and both your heart and arteries are Store Houses for fat in the body, human meat marbling.
When your Heart Muscle becomes marbled with fat (along with your arteries), your Heart Muscle, after decades of eating marbled cow muscles, looks like the marbled cow muscles and your heart now has Heart Disease…and your arteries have Vascular Disease (stroke), and now you are about ready for the coffin.
So if Education is so important, why weren’t you told this in grammar school right before you had recess with some physical exercise? Perhaps some can see that the meat industry and its profits is tied in with medical heart and vascualr Disease Care profit. Eat cow muscles, meat, eventually have Heart and Vascular disease, and go to the doctor and be prescribed chemicals made from oil that are carcinogenic cancer causing and have horrendous side effects. However not a single thing in your life educated and instructed you and kept you from sickly life shortening Heart and Vascular Disease.
Same concepts apply just different causes when it comes to the killer diseases like cancers, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc.
When you see an obese person, they aren’t just fat, they are Diseased. They walk among us…apparently we are surrounded by them. Let’s hope they will not fight to continue their Disease as it’s cause is Contagious. The causes are in our grocery stores and restaurants, it’s called food that needs Health Supervision…as in “good riddance to bad rubbish”.
It’s amazing how many people say “I’d rather die than give up my meat.” Well they will, die, sooner than later…with sadness all around.
Just who is in charge of our nation’s Health, say it’s not the people who are profiting from our nation’s sickness and Disease is it? And who are they who are in control of profitable Disease Care?
1.) Insurance Companies that pay for the Disease Care
2.) Pharmaceutical Drug Companies
3.) Hospitals
4.) Doctors
We need them all, well maybe not #2, we need a substitute for #2, but we need 1, 3, and 4 promoting Health and Preventing Disease without the use of drugs and surgery except for Crisis Emergency Care.
More later…
Mahalo,
Charles