AHA: Kids Need More Physical Education

Posted on August 17, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
One solution to the obesity epidemic might be to hit it where it starts, childhood. According to HealthDay News the American Heart Association (AHA) is calling for efforts to promote more physical education in schools. Alan Mozes reports:
"Kids spend a lot of time in the schools for a lot of years, and in order for them to be as physically active as they need in order to be healthy, schools are going to have to take the initiative," said Russell Pate, chairman of the group that drafted the recommendations, and a professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina, in Columbia.

Fueling the concern, the AHA said, is the dramatically rising obesity rates among American children over the past two decades: About 16 percent of kids aged 6 to 19 are now considered overweight.

And a 2003 survey showed that more than one third of the students spend no more than 20 minutes a day on vigorous activity, while their time in front of the TV is up to three hours daily, the AHA added.
The AHA is putting significant pressure on schools to ensure children get enough exercise. HealthDay relays some of their reforms published in this week’s Circulation:
  • Schools to establish a daily minimum of 30 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity during school hours, and set up health education programs that encourage exercise and discourage sedentary behavior;
  • Schools to establish optional exercise programs outside school hours, provide extracurricular sports clubs, and promote safe walking and biking routes to school;
  • States to ensure that physical education (PE) programs are taught by certified and highly qualified teachers, and to hold schools accountable for the adequacy of such programs and for ensuring they are part of a core curriculum;
  • Child development centers and elementary schools to ensure at least 30 minutes of daily recess for exercise;
  • Higher education groups to establish programs that produce highly qualified PE and health education teachers.
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Research: Lots Of Exercise Slows The Heart

Posted on August 2, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
According to HealthDay News the results of a new study are defying the conventional wisdom that exercise doesn’t make the human heart slow down. It seems that extreme exercise can actually tire the heart and slow it by ten percent. Ed Edelson reports:
For the study, Dr. Euan A. Ashley, an assistant professor of cardiology at Stanford University and his colleagues set up shop at the finishing line of an ultra-endurance race called the "Adrenalin Rush," held in the Scottish Highlands. The annual event is grueling even by "iron man" standards, with one or two competitors usually requiring hospitalization after every race.

As athletes crossed the line after 90 hours of biking, climbing, swimming, paddling and rope work, the researchers tested their hearts.

The athletes' average heartbeat had slowed from what was measured before the race, by about 8 percent for athletes who did not carry the ACE fitness gene and 13 percent for those who did carry it.
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