Physically Active Childhood Provides Good Health in Older Age

If schoolchildren are regularly involved in sports, they are much less likely to go to the doctors when they reach 70 years of age.

Being healthy and active in older age depends on how often you exercise in adolescence. Scientists have found that if students regularly expose themselves to physical exercises, they are much less likely to attend doctors after 70.

The researchers from Cornell University in the United States once again proved an absolute benefit of physical education lessons at school. It has been proved that their effect is long-term. The positive effect of physical activity in adolescence can be felt after many decades.

Scientists have monitored the health of 712 World War II veterans, who had once been healthy young people. It turned out that the more these people had been engaged in a variety of sports back in the 1930-s and 1940-s, the fewer visits to doctors they paid annually at the age of 70 compared to their peers who had not been physically active in youth.

The amount and intensity of physical education lessons in the teenage years was the best tool for predicting the older person’s health. The researchers say that their results once again demonstrate the need to more actively involve students in sports. The children, who for some reason refrain from physical education lessons, subsequently gain more overweight and suffer from the problems with physical and mental health.

The researchers came to the sad conclusion that the level of today’s children’s sports training is significantly lower than that of their peers a few generations ago.