Ever wondered how overall movement, screen time, and sleep contribute to a teenager's overall health? We go over into the 24-hour movement recommendations for kids, drawn from a great study in the Journal of Pediatric Obesity. This episode takes you through the science of these recommendations and sheds light on their relationship with unhealthy weight indicators in young ones.
The title of this research manuscript is: Are 24-hour movement recommendations associated with obesity-related indicators in the young population? A meta-analysis. José Francisco L opez-Gil et al
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
Ever wondered how overall movement, screen time, and sleep contribute to a teenager's overall health? We go over into the 24-hour movement recommendations for kids, drawn from a great study in the Journal of Pediatric Obesity. This episode takes you through the science of these recommendations and sheds light on their relationship with unhealthy weight indicators in young ones.
The title of this research manuscript is: Are 24-hour movement recommendations associated with obesity-related indicators in the young population? A meta-analysis. José Francisco L opez-Gil et al
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
This is the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you are a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, Dr Gorgary is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, Because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgary does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, Dr Jenny Gorgary.
Speaker 1:
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Jenny Gorgary, and in this episode today I will be talking about a study that was published recently in the Journal of Pediatric Obesity, and it is about the 24-hour movement in recommendations and how are those associated with obesity-related indications in kids. So what does that mean? I'm going to explain right away. So we know that one of the main factors that are important to maintain a healthy lifestyle is to be physically active and participate in activities, not only doing structured exercise, but even unstructured exercise, like walking, going to, taking the stairs, going play football or soccer or just go out and bike. So it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to the gym for an hour, right? So any kind of movement and also, at the same time, inactivity also counts, like sitting on the couch watching TV or sitting in front of the computer and playing video games. I understand there is a role for all of this, but there are specific scientific guidelines that we providers have come to, certain suggestions, and the question is are actually these recommendations that we keep telling everyone to follow? Is there really a scientific basis for that? So that's what the researchers try to analyze and see whether they can find evidence that what we keep on saying try to exercise and try not to watch too much YouTube and videos and doing nothing. And the third thing they analyze is sleep right, because when you are sleeping, you're basically not moving at all. However, sleep is crucial. I repeat, sleep is crucial to your health, particularly if you are a teenager. So I'm going to go over what are those recommendations are and then I'm going to talk about what the researchers found. So the recommendations for how much activity the children and teenagers should do every day is that they should do at least 60 minutes every day of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
Speaker 1:
Now, what does moderate intensity activity mean? It means that you're not just walking. Like, let's say, if you are walking, you can easily sing a song, you can easily talk to you, your friend, your sister, your brother, whoever is next to you. So that would be. Walking is a type of light activity. When we're talking about moderate intensity activity, we mean that it has some intensity to it, so that you'll be able to talk, but not sing the words to your favorite song. Okay, and you will be able to feel your heart raising higher than your resting heart rate, right. So that's the definition of moderate activity. And when we say vigorous or intense activity, what we mean is that when you're active intensely, then your heart rate is elevated even more and it is hard for you to talk to whoever is next to you and maintain a normal conversation. So some examples of intense activity would be, for example, swimming very fast or running while playing soccer or doing jumping roads or running very fast. So these are examples of intense activity.
Speaker 1:
So the recommendation is that kids have 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. That's recommendation of movement number one. Now recommendation number two is that they restrict their screen time, in other words the time they spend in front of a screen, and screen can be video games, can be YouTube, can be phone, can be TV whatever actually doesn't make you move and do something, and the recommendation is that kids should have less than two hours of screen time every day. Now, if you would like to learn more about the fact of watching too much TV on adolescents weight gain, I invite you to go and check out episode five. You can go to lifestyle14scom forward slash five to listen to how does TV affect body weight in children? That's where I go more into that. And the third recommendation is a recommendation about sleep. So the recommendation is that teenagers should get at least eight to 10 hours of sleep every day, and if we're talking about younger kids, then the recommendation is actually higher than that, is closer to nine to 11 hours per day. Now if you would like to learn more about how sleeping can help teenagers being a healthier weight, I invite you to go and listen to episode four, lifestyle14scom forward slash four, and that will give you a better idea about how sleep affects the weight gain. And you can also listen to episode 16, where I talk about sugar cravings and how poor sleep can make sugar cravings worse in teenagers. So you can go to lifestyle14scom forward slash 16 and listen on episode 16.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so going back to this research again, the three main recommendations are first, at least one hour of moderate to vigorous activity every day. Number two, sleeping at least eight to 10 hours for teenagers and nine to 11 hours for younger kids. And three, spent no more than two hours in front of a screen watching TV and playing video games. So what the researchers did is they went into the database where all the research is published. They tried to find previous research that was done that looked at the kids body mass index, their weight for their height. If you don't know what body mass index is, again, I invite you to go to Episode 1, when I explain what BMI is and what is a healthy BMI for a teenager who is certain age and weight. You can find that by going to Episode 1.
Speaker 1:
So they found those manuscripts, they found all these papers and then they analyzed the data from different research that was conducted and they put it all together and then they re-analyzed them, so they ended up collecting a total. They looked on more than 9,000 studies and then they selected 29 studies that met the criteria. They wanted to analyze that. They had data on their sleep, they had data on the physical activity and they have data on screen time, and they wanted to see whether the children that followed all three recommendations actually were more likely to be on a healthier weight compared to kids that did not follow these recommendations. And so what did they find? After analyzing this data that were published in over from 2016 to 2022, so that they looked at research that was done over like eight years or so what they found was that meeting the 24-hour guidelines was, overall, associated with having lower body mass index, lower waist circumference and lower body fat percentage. So they actually provided more data to support the idea that these guidelines are indeed linked to a healthier weight and a healthier lifestyle. They overall the likelihood of being in a healthy weight. If the kids follow all those three main 24-hour movement guidelines, they were 35% more likely to be in a healthier weight compared to kids that did not follow this recommendation. That is significant decrease in the risk to be in an unhealthy weight if you just follow those three main guidelines. So I hope this episode was helpful.
Speaker 1:
You can use it as a starting point to evaluate are you meeting these three guidelines? Is there some room for improvement in any of these areas? Is it that maybe you want to start to be more active? Is it that maybe you want to start to decrease the time you spent in front of TV or your phone? Is it maybe you're not getting enough sleep, or it may be all of those things? And you don't necessarily need to improve all these areas. You don't necessarily right away, like next week, right?
Speaker 1:
I would suggest that you start by choosing one and trying to improve by 1% every day. That, trust me, that is more than enough. 1% every day means 365% in a year. Most people don't think this is important, but I am here to guarantee that small changes can have huge results, as long as you continue to follow and make them a lifestyle. So don't give up. Continue your healthy lifestyle. It will pay off, and I hope this is starting point to make positive change, not a point to start beating yourself or why you didn't do it and all those things. Let's have a positive approach to this. I hope it was helpful and I'll talk to you soon. Take care.
Speaker 2:
If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I invite you to come check out the LIFT program. It's Dr Gorgary's 12-week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteenscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens.