ISLAMABAD, July 05 (ABC): Physical activity helps kids build strong muscles and bones and lowers the risk of things like heart disease and diabetes later in life. Now, there’s yet another reason to encourage your child to move: It may help them stay mentally sharp for decades.
A new study done by researchers in Australia followed 1,200 people for 30 years and revealed a link between childhood fitness and mental performance in middle age.
The study began in 1985. It looked at people between the ages of 7 and 15 at the time, who were assessed for heart and lung fitness, power, and endurance, and measured for waist-to-hip ratio. More than 30 years later, those with the highest fitness scores and lower waist-to-hip ratios as kids tended to score better in tests of their thinking skills.
The results, published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, underline the importance of exercise not just for a healthy body but for a healthy brain. And to reap the full benefit, we may need to start as far back as early childhood.
Previous research has linked adult fitness with better thinking skills and a lower risk of dementia later in life, though this study is the first to link childhood fitness to those outcomes.
That link remained even after controlling for things like academic performance, social and economic status, smoking, and alcohol consumption, says Michele Callisaya, PhD, a study co-author and associate professor from the National Centre for Healthy Ageing at Peninsula Health and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. (Researchers from the University of Tasmania also worked on the study.)
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Many people enjoy watching tv or playing video games some of the time. Others, though, take these actions to extremes. Sometimes, you may even find yourself binge-watching tv or being unable to quit playing video games.
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