Fitness Trends in Future
Increased blood pressure, more body fat and more abdominal fat in those with the worst condition. It is well known that poor fitness predicts premature death, both in the general population and in patients with known heart disease such as heart failure or angina pectoris. We presented our findings on how the fitness of the examined children was associated with the accumulation of other risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Figure 1 shows the findings for boys and figure 2 for girls. The third of the children with the lowest fitness had clearly increased accumulation of other risk factors for cardiovascular disease such as increased blood pressure, more body fat and more abdominal fat.
Increased amount of body fat and abdominal fat results in a larger left atrium
It should be well known that an epidemic of obesity is spreading worldwide is unfortunately no exception. In adults and in children with obesity, an increased size of the left atrium has previously been observed, which is not favorable because this is associated with an increased risk of suffering from, for example, atrial fibrillation or blood clots.
We have also studied this, as it has not previously been investigated in healthy children. We found that both an increased amount of body fat and an increased amount of abdominal fat were associated with a larger left atrium. Almost 10% of differences in left atrial size could be explained by differences in body fat or abdominal fat (6). Again, these may appear to be weak associations, but these are healthy 10-year-old children.
At the annual we presented our findings on how children’s total fat and abdominal fat were associated with an increased accumulation of other risk factors for cardiovascular disease (7). In both boys and girls, we found that more body fat and more abdominal fat were also associated but an increased accumulation of other risk factors for cardiovascular disease such as increased blood pressure, lower fitness and negative structural changes on the heart.
We have so far shown that already at the age of 10 there is a connection between physical activity, fitness and the amount of fat and against the accumulation of other risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Our ambition is to follow how this possibly changes during growing up depending on changes in, for example, physical activity. During the past year, we have also started a collaboration, together with research colleagues. The aim is to highlight how common it is with the accumulation of risk factors for cardiovascular disease in children and what connection these risk factors have with both the amount of body fat and fitness level image.
