The role of regular exercising has long been deemed important to prevent a host of lifestyle diseases including cancer, diabetes among others. The World Health Organisation recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 70 minutes of vigorous exercising for adults in a week to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Kids between 5-17 years should undertake at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily to maintain good health and optimum physical development.
A recent report published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, suggests just 10 minutes of high-intensity physical activity every day for kids to keep heart problems and metabolic diseases at bay. Researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in the US found that replacing light-intensity physical activity with brief periods of vigorous exercise may provide significant cardio-metabolic benefits in young people with relatively large waist measurements and elevated levels of insulin in their blood.
For the study, the team analysed 11,588 young people aged between 4 and 18 from countries like the US, Brazil and other European countries. Participants' age, gender, level of physical activity and at least one biomarker of a cardio-metabolic risk were studied.As a result only 32 significant associations out of a possible 360 were found while evaluating the relationships between the biomarkers and vigorous physical activity.
