Once again, I want to revisit the topic of physical exercise among kids. It’s nice to see our kids running and playing outdoors having fun. But aside from enjoyment, physical activities and exercise may actually protect our kids from having metabolic syndrome, according to a recent study.

Metabolic syndrome is a problem among adolescents and symptoms of this disorder include hypertension, glucose intolerance, low HDL cholesterol, and obesity.

According to the American Heart Association, “people with the metabolic syndrome are at increased risk of coronary heart disease and other diseases related to plaque buildups in artery walls … and type 2 diabetes.” It is currently estimated that over 50 million people in the US have metabolic syndrome.

A research by Robert McMurray and colleagues found that metabolic syndrome is related to two lifestyle factors that are actually alterable: obesity and lack of exercise. This is based on their study on 389 children aged 7 to 10 years old. They observed that adolescents with metabolic syndrome were 5 times less physically active and 6 times less likely to engage in aerobic exercise than those who don’t have the syndrome. They also found out that almost 5% of the children they studied develop metabolic syndrome within 7 years of their study. Based on these findings, they suggest that we parents should encourage our kids to be more active and physically fit, thus preventing metabolic syndrome. They also recommend that physical fitness should start as early as possible so that our kids will get the early protection.

Previous posts have touched on the benefits of physical exercise on children’s blood pressure and bone development.

Need some pointers to keep your kids active? Check out these strategies and these games.

With all of the paparazzi and media backlash that stars and media icons receive today it’s no wonder they are prone to eating disorders and vanity. The pressure put on women in the entertainment and modeling business is immense, and many stars suffer from eating disorders put onto them by the stress of being in the limelight. These women are often idolized by our young girls and can be harmful to establishing a positive and healthy self-image. According to an article in Archives of Pediatrics and Medicine (Jama/Archives), “An adolescent girl who regularly has family meals is less likely to suffer and go on to suffer form an eating disorder or consume laxatives, diet pills, or take some extreme measure to control her weight.”
The targeted risk of eating disorder generally increases as the child matures from adolescence into adulthood, explain the authors. “Disordered eating behaviors are associates with a number of harmful behavioral, physical and psychological consequence, including poorer dietary quality, weight gain and obesity onset, depressive symptoms and the onset of eating disorders. Thus, it is important to identify strategies for the prevention of disordered eating behaviors.”

Sitting down for a family meal may be one answer to this rising trend. Having a child on a set eating schedule will help to maintain their natural biological intake cycle as well as help to later reinforce similar cycles as they get older. If possible dinner should be free from outside distractions such as televisions or movies for the most part, and family members should be encouraged to talk about their happenings at school or work or other types of positive conversation.

As a child who was raised with the every night sit down dinner with my parents and the occasional family pizza and a movie, I definitely think that this type of traditional pattern is helpful for a number of reasons. Because of the constant interaction I had with my parents, planning out family schedules and thoughts during dinner gave us time for everyone to be on the same page. This minimized “surprises” and helped to reinforce memory and schedule so that we had very few “oops” family moments. I also think that this type of dinner is helpful because now as I have become a mother, I have a broad knowledge base of meal options to feed my own daughter simply from remembering the meals that were fed to me.

Dinnertime should be a pleasant time and can also be a great bonding time for both parent and child. Having your children help out in preparing, cooking, place-setting, and clean up helps them later in life when they no longer have a parent to watch over them. As according to to Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.d, M.P.H. , R.D., of the University of Minneapolis, “Teenage girls who ate with their families at least five times each week in 1999 were substantially less likely to report using extreme measures, such as using diuretics or making themselves vomit to control their weight in 2004, this was despite such factors as social demographics, BMI and family connectedness. ”
This statistic was not as great in the male gender that were tested, and reasons for this variation are generally unclear. “Perhaps boys who engage in regular family meals are different in some way that increases their risk for disordered eating behaviors. There is also the possibility that adolescent boys and girls have different experiences at family meals. For example, girls may have more involvement in food preparation and other food-related tasks, which may play a protective role in the development of disordered eating behaviors. Finally, family meals may offer more benefits to adolescent girls, who may be more sensitive to and likely to be influenced by interpersonal and familial relationships than are adolescent boys.”

These findings and other related studies should serve as a motivating factor in helping families to find ways to eat meals together. “Health care professionals have an important role to play in reinforcing the benefits of family meals, helping families set realistic goals for increasing family meal frequency given schedules of adolescents and their parents, exploring ways to enhance the atmosphere at family meals with adolescents and discussing strategies for creating healthful and easy-to-prepare family meals,” they conclude. “Schools and community organizations should also be encouraged to make it easier for families to have shared mealtimes on a regular basis.”

Source:

“Family Meals and Disordered Eating in Adolescents. Longitudinal Findings From Project EAT”
Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, PhD, MPH, RD; Marla E. Eisenberg, ScD, MPH; Jayne A. Fulkerson, PhD; Mary Story, PhD, RD; Nicole I. Larson, MPH, RD
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2008;162(1):17-22.
Click here to read more from this study: http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/162/1/17