Fitness boosts teen brains

Tuesday October 22nd, 2013

Teenage girls who undertake regular exercise show dramatic improvements in the study of science, researchers report today.

Exercise across the board helps teenagers with their studies, researchers report.

And any exercise contributes to long-term academic improvement, according to the research.

Researchers hope their findings may help encourage schools to devote more time to sport and fitness - helping to tackle problems of obesity and unfitness among children.

The findings come from a study of 14,000 people born in the south-west of England in the early 1990s.

At the age of 11, researchers measured the amount of activity being undertaken by the children, using accelerometers, worn on elasticated belts.

At the time the boys managed an average of 29 minutes of exercise a day and girls just 18 minutes.

The research, reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, shows that differences in levels of exercise continued to be reflected in exam results at the age of 13 and 16.

Researcher Dr Josephine Booth, of Dundee University, Scotland, said: “If moderate to vigorous physical activity does influence academic attainment this has implications for public health and education policy by providing schools and parents with a potentially important stake in meaningful and sustained increases in physical activity."

Associations between objectively measured physical activity and academic attainment in adolescents from a UK cohort. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 22 October 2013; doi 10.1136/bjsports-2013-092334

Tags: Fitness | Infancy to Adolescence | UK News

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