Health-related physical fitness of normal, stunted and overweight children aged 6-14 years in Macedonia

Abstract

Introducción: la nutrición parenteral (NP) en la infancia es un tratamiento cuyas características son muy variables en función de la edad y la patología que presente el paciente.

Relationship between body mass index and physical fitness in Italian prepubertal schoolchildren

“…Consistent with previous literature findings, the present study detected statistically significant differences between various physical fitness scores achieved by OB, OW, NW and UW children. Specifically, it is known that OW and OB children perform worse than NW children in weight bearing activities, as was the case in the Leger, shuttle and jump tests [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. In the present study, this trend was found to be similar between sexes and more prominent in older children than in younger children, emphasizing the need to promote healthier lifestyles from an early age.…”

“…On the other hand, the increased mechanical work needed to lift the body off the ground in everydaylife activities could have a positive influence on absolute muscle strength, increasing fat free mass (FFM) more in OB children than in their NW counterparts [53,54]. A higher FFM, which is known to correlate with strength parameters in obese subjects [55], might be the reason why better throwing scores were obtained by the OB and OW children in the present and in previous studies [18,20,21,24] than by NW children. In contrast, some authors [23,25] have found comparable strength of the upper limb in OB, OW and NW children.…”

“…Muscular power of the lower limb. Lower limb explosive power was evaluated by a long jump test [17,18,20,21,23,25,33,34,36,37]. The validity and reliability of jump tests have been previously evaluated in children by several authors [31,32,38].…”

“…Flexibility. Hip and low back flexibility were evaluated by the Sit & Reach test [17,18,20,21,23,25,33,34], whose reliability and validity have been previously assessed in the literature [32,41]. In a seated position with their knees extended and their feet placed firmly against a vertical support, children reached forward along the measuring line as far as possible with their arms at the same level.…”

“…Moreover, research has found positive associations between children's adiposity and physical fitness, regardless of physical activity levels [10]. In particular, several authors have linked higher BMIs to poor performance in weight bearing activities, i.e., activities that require moving bodyweight through space [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], while inconsistences have been found in the association between children's weight status and muscular strength [18,20,21,[23][24][25]. Given the connections that are present among fitness, weight and health status, monitoring physical fitness levels in prepubertal children may be essential to prevent fitness deficiencies, obesity and their possible health-related consequences [25].…”