Significance

• Over the past 30 years, children in the United States have become increasingly inactive. Time in front of the television and the computer has trumped physical activity, leading to a sedentary lifestyle among youngsters that did not exist decades ago. These high rates of inactivity are leading to a variety of health problems and creating an epidemic of obesity that could affect these children's overall quality of life for years to come.
  
  

Benefits

• The link between regular aerobic exercise and a child's quality of life is well documented. Active children who participate in sports or other aerobic activities will generally have lower body-fat percentages, stronger muscles, healthy cholesterol levels and a decreased chance of developing chronic health problems such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Exercise has also been linked to an increase in sociability and self-confidence and lower rates of depression.
  
  A recent study by the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Auckland in New Zealand found that regular exercise also creates healthier sleep patterns in children. According to the research, children who regularly participated in moderate to vigorous exercise fell asleep faster than their sedentary counterparts did. "As short sleep duration is associated with obesity and lower cognitive performance, community emphasis on the importance of promoting healthy sleep in children is vitally important," the report stated.
  
  

Guidelines

• The National Association for Sports and Physical Education (NASPE) recommends that all children older than 2 get at least one hour of exercise every day. The amount of activity is dependent on the age of the child, with the NASPE recommending 30 minutes of planned exercise and 60 minutes of unstructured play for toddlers and an hour or more of exercise for school-age children. The exercise doesn't have to be completed in one long stretch, but can be broken up throughout the day in segments of 15 minutes or more.
  
  

Facts

• Both children and adults need to participate in regular aerobic activity to remain healthy. When individual are aerobically active, their heart rates and breathing increase to distribute higher levels of oxygen throughout the body. This process strengthens the muscles of her heart and lungs, leading to better cardiovascular health.
  
  The 2005 Youth Risk Factor Surveillance Study found that 9.6 percent of children in the United States are not getting enough exercise. In addition, the National Health and Nutritional Examination Study determined that approximately the same percentage of children in the United States between the ages of 6 and 17 have high levels of cholesterol.
  
  

Long-Term Effects

• Studies contend that the benefits of aerobic fitness extend beyond a child's physical health by positively affecting intelligence levels. Independent studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Delaine Eastin, the superintendent of public instruction in California, have found a positive association between children's standardized test scores and their activity levels. Specifically, Eastin's study found that physically active children scored higher in mathematics. The relationship was also more pronounced in females.