14 DAY TRIAL // According to recent investigations, it would appear that only a small percentage of children in the United Kingdom have sufficiently-high levels of physical activity to qualify as healthy according to existing standards. Scientists believer that one of the main reasons why this happens is because children tend not to engage in enough active play. Past generations did so because they had little distractions, such as the Internet and computers. The fact that children today have access to such technologies from an early age is clearly a factor that contributes to the changes in overall health, experts believe.
Getting sufficient amounts of physical exercises and active play is a factors that plays an important part in the health of future generations, scientists from the University of Bristol argue in a new paper. They say that inactive individuals are more prone to developing conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, obesity and diabetes. These afflictions are currently the hallmark of developed societies, in which individuals tend not to engage in physical activities. Such is the case in the UK as well, where few children meet current physical activity guidelines.
“Active play makes a significant contribution to health-enhancing physical activity of many primary school children and may be a valuable focus for future intervention. Our research also suggests that the after-school period, when some children have greater freedom of choice, seems to be a critical period for active play,” UB Department of Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences research student Rowan Brockman explains. The investigation was funded by the British Heart Foundation, through a research grant.
The UB team published its conclusions in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Preventive Medicine. The paper, called “The contribution of active play to the physical activity of primary school children,” was authored by Brockman, and coauthored by other colleagues at the university. The study was conducted between February 2008 and March 2009, on a study group of 747 children, aged between 10 and 11. The research is an integrated part of a larger study, which seeks to determine the influence of peers and parents on the way children engage in physical activities.