Exercise and kids’ brainpower
From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
A study supports the idea that kids who play about an hour a day build better brainpower as well as bodies. At the University of Illinois, researcher Charles Hillman checked data on 221 7- to-9-year-olds – half of whom did nine months of moderate to vigorous activity after school.
“Children who performed 60 minutes or more of physical activity a day had greater change in brain functions underlying attention and processing speed, as well as a 2-fold increase in their ability to pay attention and multitask.”
And he says kids who had better attendance scored better on the mental tests.
Physical fitness went up, too.
The study in the journal Pediatrics was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
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HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.