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Health Check: Children’s Declining Fitness

Children running a school race

18/12/2013

Children’s Declining Fitness

BBC World Service - Health Check, Children’s Declining Fitness

Why today’s children are on average 15% slower at running than their parents

Why children are 15% less fit today than 30 years ago; How singing improves the lungs of COPD patients; Can you get stuck together having sex?; The harms and benefits of laughter

Australian researchers have looked back at several decades of research from around the world on children’s ability to perform prolonged exercise such as distance running, and have found that many children are slower runners than their parents were at the same age.  Internationally today’s children are on average about 15% less aerobically fit than their parents. Lead researcher Dr Grant Tomkinson is senior lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at the University of South Australia. 

Singing and COPD
Around the world an estimated 68 million people have a condition called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD which makes breathing extremely difficult, even during normal day-to-day activities. The damage to the lungs which causes these symptoms cannot be cured, but recent research from Canterbury Christchurch University in the UK has come up with a rather surprising new way to relieve the effects for patients. The BBC’s Datshiane Navanayagam has been to experience it for herself.

Penis Captivus
A few weeks ago the programme featured a study on sex-related admissions to an emergency department in Switzerland. In the discussion it was mentioned that couples getting stuck together during sex was nothing more than a myth. But two listeners contacted Claudia and begged to differ. Health Check decided to find out the answer once and for all. Can it actually happen?  Dr John Dean, Clinical Director of Gender and Sexual Medicine for Devon Partnership NHS Trust in south-west England, examines the medical literature.

Laughter
We tend to think of laughter as good for our health, and it can be. But according to a new paper in the British Medical Journal, which has analysed all the research on this subject, laughter is not always the best medicine. Robin Ferner is Honorary Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Birmingham in the UK.

(Picture: Children running a race at school. Credit: Phil Coomes, BBC)

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