What is it about?
Heart diseases are still major cause of premature death in adults. Heart diseases also cause significant economical burden. Previous studies have found that risk factors for cardiovascular diseases can be found already in children. Increased arterial stiffness is one of the early risk factor for heart diseases. We found that children with better cardiorespiratory fitness (sometimes called aerobic fitness) had lower arterial stiffness than their peers with lower fitness. Our findings also showed that children with combinations of high fitness, high physical activity, or low body fatness had the lowest arterial stiffness.
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Why is it important?
The prevention of heart diseases should begin as early as possible and preferably since childhood. Increasing children 's fitness and physical activity may prevent arterial stiffening in childhood and therefore prevent later heart diseases in adulthood.
Perspectives
This study was part of PhD thesis of Dr Aapo Veijalainen, MD, PhD and we had very good team working with this manuscript. I really enjoyed working with Aapo and we have continued our collaboration in vascular health related studies.
Dr. Eero Haapala
University of Jyväskylä
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Associations of cardiorespiratory fitness, physical activity, and adiposity with arterial stiffness in children, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, July 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/sms.12523.
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