A recent study, a collaboration between the University of Exeter, University of Eastern Finland, and University of Bristol, has made a surprising discovery about young people’s health.
Published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, the research shows that light physical activity might benefit young hearts more than previously thought.
The study used data from the Children of the 90s project, also known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which tracked 792 children from age 11 to 24.
The researchers found that if children spend a lot of time sitting and not moving, their cholesterol levels could rise by two-thirds by their mid-twenties. This increase in cholesterol is linked to serious heart problems and even early death.
While we know that moving around and not sitting too much is good for health, this study specifically looked at the impact of different kinds of physical activity on cholesterol levels.
It’s the first to dig into how just sitting, light activity, and more intense physical activity affect cholesterol in children.
The World Health Organization suggests kids and teens should get about 60 minutes of intense activity every day and should try not to sit too much.
However, they don’t say much about light physical activities, including walking, doing house chores, or slow dancing.
But this new study and other recent research suggest that light physical activities could be up to five times better than intense exercises for keeping young hearts healthy and reducing inflammation.
Dr. Andrew Agbaje, who led this study, believes that light physical activities could prevent high cholesterol and related health problems from an early age. These findings could even lead to a change in global recommendations for children’s exercise.
The researchers used special accelerometers to measure how much the children moved and how intensely they exercised at ages 11, 15, and 24. They also checked their cholesterol levels several times during this period.
They found that, on average, children became more sedentary as they grew up, spending about nine hours a day sitting by the time they reached young adulthood.
The study found that children who engaged in about four-and-a-half hours of light physical activity every day had significantly lower cholesterol levels. This effect was seen even after considering body fat, which can influence cholesterol levels.
In contrast, more intense physical activity had a smaller impact on cholesterol levels, and its benefits were reduced even further by increased body fat.
These findings are crucial, especially since another recent study by Dr. Agbaje showed that light physical activity could also reverse obesity risks in children.
Sedentary lifestyles contributed significantly to fat gain from childhood to young adulthood, but light physical activities greatly reduced this fat gain.
Dr. Agbaje emphasizes the importance of encouraging children to engage in light physical activities for at least three hours every day. This approach could be much more effective than focusing solely on an hour of intense exercise.
Light physical activity appears an excellent way to counteract the negative effects of sitting too much and could be crucial for the long-term health of our young population.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that vitamin K helps cut heart disease risk by a third, and a year of exercise reversed worrisome heart failure.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about supplements that could help prevent heart disease, stroke, and results showing this food ingredient may strongly increase heart disease death risk.
The research findings can be found in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
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