Importance of Physical Exercise/Limiting Screen Time

Instead of playing the blame game, pro-active parents can help keep children and teens trim and fit in the electronic age and a world filled with high-calorie junk-food and super-sized meals.

Children and teens should try to take about 12,000 steps per day in order to achieve the 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity experts recommend, says a new Canadian study.

Looking for ideas on how to keep your kids busy over spring break.  Ask your kids to put away the hand-held electronics for a day, get some exercise, and have some fun on an outdoor adventure.

MomsTeam nutrition expert Nancy Clark reports on the latest research from the ACSM Annual Meeting on the importance of physical exercise, nutrition for the injured athlete, and creatine safety.

Litsa Bolontzakis thinks we're all living disposable lives, and that our children deserve better.  The best things in life we can offer our kids take little time, and cost nothing, she says.  Her message to parents is to take whatever time they can to turn off the TV, shut down the computer, leave the cell phones turned off and open their children's eyes to the world around us.

According to a 2010 study, U.S. youth ages eight to 18 spend an average of seven hours, 38 minutes each day using entertainment media such as a television and computer.  A new Australian study finds that parents who can get their child to follow a physical activity skill development program and modify their diet can reduce their overweight child's screen time by nearly one hour per day.

 

 

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Regular physical activity in children and adolescents promotes health and fitness. Compared to those who are inactive, physically active youth have higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness and stronger muscles. They also typically have lower body fatness. Their bones are stronger, and they may have reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Parents who believe that their kids are getting enough physical exercise just from playing organized sports may be in for a surprise.  A new study finds that, though participation in youth sports contributes to overall physical activity, fewer than one fourth of youth soccer, baseball and softball players studied obtained the sixty minutes a day of moderate to vigorous physical exercise (MVPA) during sports practices that U.S. guidelines recommend.

Researchers have found an association between physical fitness and the brain in 9- and 10-year-old children: Those who are more fit tend to have a bigger hippocampus and perform better on a test of memory than their less-fit peers.