Kids Need To Exercise More to Fight Against Heart Disease

by Heather McLaughlin

This morning I read an interesting article at Yahoo News.

According to this article, children should be exercising a minimum of 90 minutes daily to fight against heart disease, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure.

“Physical activity levels need to be higher than the current international guidelines of at least one hour per day,” said Lars Bo Andersen of the Norwegian School of Sports Science in Oslo.
Andersen and his team assessed the impact of exercise on 1,732 children from Denmark, Estonia and Portugal, aged either nine or 15.
They compared the amount of exercise they did every day and measured their risks of developing heart disease.
They found that the more the children exercised, the more their combined risks factor score decreased.

What I thought was interesting about this article was the fact that it gave no information on what sort of diet these children followed.

Cholesterol is a product of animal fat, so cutting back on meat or other products that have high cholesterol could be another way to combat against that ailment. It’s a shame that teenagers are now coming down with an illness that was virtually unheard of 30 years ago.

A well rounded diet can help to prevent against heart disease and should be considered as a childs first line of defense. A combination of a healthy diet and daily exercise should be the one-two punch to leading a healthy lifestyle.