One of the most important things you can do for your health is to engage in regular physical activity. Physical activity can improve your brain health, help you manage your weight, lower your risk of disease, strengthen your bones and muscles, and improve your ability to do everyday tasks. Physical activity is beneficial to everyone’s health regardless of age, ability, ethnicity, shape, or size.
Regular physical activity promotes growth and development and has numerous physical, mental, and psychosocial health benefits that unquestionably contribute to learning. Physical activity, in particular, lowers the risk of heart disease, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, obesity, and metabolic syndrome; improves other aspects of health and fitness, such as aerobic capacity, muscle and bone strength, flexibility, insulin sensitivity, and lipid profiles; and lowers stress, anxiety, and depression.
High aerobic fitness does not protect children from metabolic syndrome, according to a study conducted in collaboration by the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Eastern Finland. The study also discovered that the amount of fat tissue in the body distorted the findings of previous studies on the protective effect of aerobic fitness against metabolic syndrome. The researchers also discovered that in adults, poor aerobic fitness is not a feature of metabolic syndrome. Nonetheless, good aerobic fitness may indicate a lack of metabolic syndrome risk factors.
Our results show that being overweight or obese increases the risk of metabolic syndrome regardless of the level of aerobic fitness. Instead of focusing on aerobic fitness, preventing metabolic syndrome should start with increasing physical activity, improving diet quality, and controlling weight.
Eero Haapala
Specifically, the study looked at how consideration of body size and composition affects the association between aerobic fitness and metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome refers to the accumulation of hazards for metabolic and cardiovascular diseases in one person. Metabolic syndrome is characterized by high body fat, elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance, increased triglycerides, and lowered high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL).
Based on the findings, low aerobic fitness is not a risk factor for metabolic syndrome in children. When aerobic fitness is divided by total body weight, high-fit children have a lower risk of metabolic syndrome. However, this protective effect of fitness seems to be due to differences in fat mass and not aerobic fitness.
“Our results show that being overweight or obese increases the risk of metabolic syndrome regardless of the level of aerobic fitness,” says Eero Haapala, Ph.D. from the Faculty of Sport Science, the University of Jyväskylä. “Instead of focusing on aerobic fitness, preventing metabolic syndrome should start with increasing physical activity, improving diet quality, and controlling weight.”
In adults, the importance of low aerobic fitness as a risk factor for metabolic syndrome was significantly reduced once body composition was taken into account. Skin fold measurements were used to assess body composition in adults. If the DXA device had been used to measure body composition, the importance of aerobic fitness might have been reduced even further.
Although aerobic fitness had a weak relationship with metabolic syndrome, it was associated with higher HDL cholesterol levels.
The PANIC study included 352 children aged 9 to 11 years, and the KIHD study included 572 men aged 53 to 72 years. A maximal bicycle ergometer test was used to assess endurance fitness by measuring maximum oxygen uptake. International standards were used to determine metabolic syndrome. In addition, body composition was measured in children using both InBody and DXA devices, and in adults using skin fold thickness measurement.
Physical activity can help to improve mental health by alleviating and preventing conditions like anxiety and depression, as well as improving mood and other aspects of well-being. Physical activity programming designed specifically for this purpose has been shown to improve psychosocial outcomes such as self-concept, social behaviors, goal orientation, and, most importantly, self-efficacy. These attributes in turn are important determinants of current and future participation in physical activity.
