Exercise is key to reversing signs of heart disease — even in school-age children. A report published earlier this month in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association found that the arteries of overweight children were similar to those of middle-age smokers but that diet and exercise can go a long way in reducing the risk of heart attack or stroke.
Dr. Kam S. Wood, a professor of medicine and a cardiologist at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, led a study that followed 54 boys and 28 girls with an average age of 9.9 years. Based on body-mass index, 28 were overweight and 54 were obese. The youngsters, who did not have family histories of heart disease, already showed early signs of atherosclerosis, the clogged-artery problem that can lead to heart attack or stroke.
The children either dieted or dieted and exercised. The exercise group participated in a 75-minute session of aerobics and weight training twice a week.
After six weeks, children in both groups had reduced body fat, lowered total cholesterol and increased arterial function, with the diet and exercise group showing a greater improvement in the last category.
Over the next year, the children who were exercising continued to show improvement.
This report can help get the message across to Americans to get off the couch. However, actually getting up and moving is easier said than done for some families, says Dr. William Dietz, director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control.
Dr. Dietz says excess weight needs to be treated as a chronic condition. Doctors need to impart the message of nutrition and exercise as the way to manage obesity, starting in childhood, rather than relying on drugs or surgery to quick-fix the problem in adulthood.
“There is more money invested in drug therapy than in behavioral change,” Dr. Dietz says. “We’re not at all certain that overweight can be treated in an acute care model. We need to treat it as a chronic disease.”
One way to get Americans to exercise is to encourage more activity throughout the day, says Melinda S. Sothern, director of the child obesity lab and an exercise physiologist at Louisiana State University, and the author of “Trim Kids: The Proven 12-Week Plan That Has Helped Thousands of Children Achieve a Healthier Weight.”
Some of Ms. Sothern’s tips for sneaking in activity:
• Tell your child he or she can watch television, as long as he gets up and dances around for the duration of every commercial break. If the children are watching a video, they must pause it every 30 minutes to take an exercise break. If there is an argument, no video.
• If your child is a telephone talker, invest in a cordless phone. Tell her she can talk — as long as she walks. Tell her if she sits down, the conversation is over. Make surprise visits to monitor.
• If you have a garden, invite children to help weed, plant, water and rake. These are fun ways to get moving outdoors.
• Go outside and play. When children get home from school, offer them water and send them outside to ride bikes or scooters, climb trees or play basketball. Nowhere to play right outside your door? Take them to a safe park or playground. They will get exercise and be prepared to do homework after 30 to 60 minutes of moving around outside, Ms. Sothern says.
mCreate imagination stations in your house. Hula-Hoops, puppets, costumes, CDs and microphones not only get children imagining, but get them singing, dancing and moving.
mFor severely obese children who have trouble moving, even exercising in small increments will help. The American Heart Association recommends 20 to 30 minutes of movement on most days. The 20 to 30 minutes does not have to be all at once. Exercising 10 minutes in the morning and 10 in the evening will burn the same amount of calories overall, Ms. Sothern says.
Some of these activities may seem insignificant, but all activity burns calories, she says. Sitting burns just 30 to 50 calories per hour, while standing burns nearly twice as many. Walking slowly burns 120 to 200 calories per hour.
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