London 7 Aug : New records of physical inactivity and obesity for children mean that they’re set to take the most of less favorable health consequences of increasing temperatures worldwide, according to a new , comprehensive study of studies. Although physical fitness is essential to surviving the heat children are becoming more overweight and less physically fit than before, according to Dr.Shawnda Morrison who is an environmental exercise physiologist at Slovenia’s University of Ljubljana.
This puts people at a higher risk of being affected by heat-related health problems, including heat cramps, dehydration heat exhaustion, or heat stroke.
She said that the current policies on climate change fail to adequately address children’s health needs , and that encouraging children to make exercise a part of their daily lives should be a priority if they want to be able to cope with living in an increasingly hot world.
In the peer-reviewed journal Temperature her team evaluated the fullness of more than 150 scientific and medical studies on how children keep up with fitness, physical activity and deal with temperatures and how this may be affected as global temperatures increase.
The research she emphasizes, includes an investigation of 457 elementary school boys aged 5-12 years old in Thailand and discovered that overweight children were two times more likely to experience difficulty controlling their body temperature than those of normal weight who exercised outdoors.
In a different study, the data from emergency departments of hospitals for children in the US found that the attendance rate was higher on hot days.
Children who were younger were more likely to require emergency medical attention.
The study also showed that children’s aerobic capacity is 30% less than the fitness of their parents of the same age.
There is a rapid decline in kids’ physical activity worldwide especially in the last 30 years.
Many children aren’t meeting the guidelines of the World Health Organization of having the equivalent of at 60 minutes of exercise each day.
Physical inactivity was increased especially during the Covid-19 pandemic , when schools and other infrastructures for society were shut down.
The rise in temperatures and the modifications in the weather pattern are predicted to trigger the emergence of new diseases that are entering the populace.
If there are further restrictions on movement in place to stop the spread of new diseases, this could be devastating to children’s physical and mental physical health.
“Yet even as the temperature gets warmer children aren’t the most fit they’ve ever been.
It is essential that kids are encouraged to engage in every day physical exercise to build, and maintain their fitness level, so that they are able to enjoy exercising their bodies, and don’t feel like work or a chore to their bodies,” Morrison said.
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