What is obesity doing to our children’s brains? - (It’s not good)
We’re all aware that obesity isn’t good for anyone. We’ve heard the warnings about the association between obesity and heart disease and metabolic diseases such as diabetes. We also know, and can see, that obesity isn’t limited to adults. Obesity in children is a global problem. It is estimated that more than 340 million children around the world are obese! But a new study for Northeastern University in Boston, MA, headed by Nicole Logan, tells us that obesity is also affecting our children’s brains!
MRIs of obese children and adolescents show that amounts of grey matter in the brain (think complex thoughts and controlling emotions) are associated with weight and height at birth and also breast feeding. On the other hand, children identified as lean showed associations with white matter (think memory and attention).
The good news is that the authors concluded that just nine months of consistent physical activity can stop the lessening of brain function in children!
So how to do this? Here are some easy to adopt strategies:
• Create a schedule for a Kid’s Zumba Class on You Tube
• Create a schedule for a Family or Kid Cardio Workout on You Tube
• Together take a walk or hike
• Buy a hula hoop and see how many rotations your child can count
• Check out all these games to play with a beach ball: https://www.shapeamerica.org/uploads/teachersToolbox/earlyChildhood/Moving_with_beach_ballsRev.pdf
• Set up an indoor balance beam. Here’s how:
Stick masking tape onto a large floor area in a straight line at first. Have children walk on it like a balance beam. Once the children have had time to practice on that, change it up a bit and add more strips of masking tape going in different directions and zig-zag patters that they can follow. Play some fun kids’ songs as background music to have an exciting atmosphere.
Variation: With a??? balls some children can roll in the tape line. Others thought it might be fun to dribble their balls around the lines.
Read the full article: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/2022/10000/The_Differential_Effects_of_Adiposity_and_Fitness.9.aspx