Supervisors info:
Κυρίτση Ελένη, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια, Νοσηλευτική, Πανεπιστήμιο Δυτικής Αττικής
Τζουμάκα-Μπακούλα Χρυσάνθη, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Κουτελέκος Ιωάννης, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Νοσηλευτική, Πανεπιστήμιο Δυτικής Αττικής
Summary:
Introduction: during the last decades, the prevalence of obesity in children has rapidly increased, thus the percentages of overweight and obese children in almost all developed countries are highest than ever before. Therefore, physical activity in combination with healthy dietary habits, have been used as the sole solution to fight the raising rates of overweight and obese children.
Aim: The aim of this study was to estimate the Body Mass Index in children between 6 and 12 years of age, depending on the frequency and intensity of their physical exercise.
Material and methods: Totally 100 children participated in this study, aged between 6 and 12 years, that lived in Patras city. Their personal data were collected via a specially designed questionnaire, which their parents had to fill. Raw data were statistically processed using the t-test and anova analysis. The level of significance was set at 0.05.
Results: From the 100 children participated in this study, 53.6% were female and 56.6% were under 9 years old, while 43.4% were between 10 and 12 years old. The majority (70.4%) of young children had a normal weight, while 17.3% were underweight and 12.2% were overweight or obese. 42% of children did not engage in physical activities, 31.3% exercised frequently and 26.6% always. 23.5% had only three meals daily, while 34.7% had four and 41.8% more than four meals per day. Female children had a higher BMI that male (p=0.007), while the same trend was observed among children older than 9 years old (p0.001). Children’s BMI was also found abnormal when their mother were overweight (p=0.007), when their parents worked as freelance (p=0.001). The same pattern was evident among children who did not perform any physical exercise (p<0.001), spend a lot of time watching TV and playing video games (0.039), and drunk soda drinks frequently (p=0.002), but did not drink milk (p<0.01).
Conclusions: Our results suggest that various socioeconomic factors contribute to high rates of overweight or obese children between the age of 6-12 years, such as unhealthy mothers’ weight, fathers’ employment, low income, low physical activity and high TV and video games occupation. Thus, it is evident that healthy interventions early in children’s life could address the obesity issue in young children.
