Facts About Youth Sports and Health

taken from Team-Up for Youth 

Sports programs get kids physically active — a significant step in addressing the steep rise in childhood overweight and obesity and ensuring a lifelong love of physical activity. Physical activity improves overall health, increases longevity, and protects against obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, depression, and anxiety.Exercise and sports participation can also enhance mental health and self confidence.Yet fewer than half of young people, and only a quarter of low-income youth, participate in organized sports outside of school.

 

Childhood Obesity and Related Problems

 

•       Today’s children are likely to be the first generation to live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents due to obesity and other related diseases.

 

•       More than 15% of the nation’s children between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight, up from just 4% in the 1970s.

 

•       One-third of American children and youth are either obese or at risk of becoming obese.

 

•       The cumulative lifetime risk of coronary heart disease is likely greatest among those who are persistently overweight throughout their adolescent years.

 

•       Approximately 300,000 deaths a year in the US are currently associated with overweight and obesity.

 

•       Obesity-related health expenditures have accounted for an estimated 25% or more of national health care spending growth between 1987 and 2001.

 

Inactivity

 

•       Physical inactivity can lead to poorer health outcomes for children and adolescents.

 

•       The California Department of Education conducts annual fitness tests in California public schools in grades five, seven, and nine. In 2007, only 30% of students were in the healthy fitness zone on all six areas tested.

 

•       Only about one-third of children aged 9 to 13 participate in any organized physical activity during their non-school hours.

 

Positive Effects of Youth Sports on Health

 

•       Physical activity helps control and prevent a range of health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Even small amounts of physical activity can improve health, no matter how much a person weighs or whether a person loses weight.

 

•       Adolescents who participate in greater levels of physical activity are less likely to smoke, or they smoke fewer cigarettes.

 

•       Female athletes in grades 9 through 12 are less than half as likely to get pregnant as their non-athlete peers, and they tend to have higher self-esteem and more positive body image.

 

•       High school athletes are less likely to use cocaine or psychedelic drugs than non-athletes.

 

•       Adults are more likely to be physically active during their free time if they participated in organized sports as children. 

 

 

Author: .ljal.com