Whether you run marathons or walk around the block every day, as long as you move is the advice these days. And not only when you are older, it is also super important for children. Because people who don’t exercise much in their youth have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. Also with normal blood pressure and a good weight.
It’s remarkable that little exercise and a lot of sitting in your early years can have such an impact later on, but that’s what a new study shows: the number of hours children and young adolescents spend sitting is linked to damage to the heart tissue. This has even been found in people who had a normal weight as a child and did not have high blood pressure.
“All those hours when young people are staring at a screen add up. In the end, these people literally get a heavy heart. And we know from studies in adults that this increases the risk of a heart attack or stroke,” explains lead researcher Andrew Agbaje of the University of Eastern Finland out. “It is important that children and young people exercise more so that their health improves in the long term.”
Link between inactivity and heart disease
The Finnish findings are part of the Children of the 90s-study. This is one of the largest cohort studies in the world, which started in 1990. The participants are followed from birth in terms of lifestyle choices. For example, the test subjects wear a smartwatch at regular intervals, so that the amount of time they spend resting at different ages can be estimated fairly accurately. That made it fairly easy to link physical inactivity as a child to possible heart problems later in life.
Weighted heart
The children wore a smartwatch with an activity tracker for seven days in a row when they were 11. They did this again when they were 15 and 24 years old. At the age of 17 and 24, the scientists also measured the weight of the participants’ left ventricle via an echocardiogram and compared this with their height. A certain number of grams per square meter (g/m2) rolled out, indicating a link between the inactive time in the age group of 11 to 24 years and the heart measurements at the age of 17 and 24. The researchers took into account factors that could confuse the conclusions, such as age, gender, blood pressure, body fat percentage, smoking behavior, physical activity and socioeconomic status.
Loiterers
A total of 766 children participated in the study, slightly more girls than boys. At age 11, the children spent an average of 362 minutes per day sitting. This rose to 474 minutes a day at puberty, at age 15, and even to 531 minutes a day at age 24. This means that between childhood and young adulthood, the people tested spent an average of 2.8 hours more sitting still per day.
Double risk of heart disease
Each additional minute of sitting still per day between the ages of 11 and 24 is linked to an enlargement of the left ventricle of 0.004 g/m2 between the ages of 17 and 24. When you multiply this by the extra 169 minutes of inactivity later in life, this equates to a 0.7 g/m2 daily increase, the equivalent of a 3 gram heavier left ventricle assuming average height growth.
Previous studies in adults have already concluded that the same enlargement of the left ventricle (1 g/m2) over a seven-year period is linked to a doubling of the risk of heart disease, stroke and premature death.
In any case, keep moving
“These children spend more than six hours per day sitting and this number rises by almost three hours by the time they reach young adulthood. Our study shows that this accumulation of physical inactivity in children and adolescents is linked to damage of the heart tissue later in life. This is also the case in children and young people who do not have an increased body weight or high blood pressure,” says Agbaje.
He advises parents to encourage their children to exercise more. “It is important to go out with them more often and go for a walk or get some exercise in some other way. Make sure you limit the amount of time children spend on social media and computer games. Because like Martin Luther King Jr. once said: If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, go for a walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But at least keep moving.”
2023-08-27 12:05:23
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