Serious health problems begin as activity slows in teens

“Give me the child of seven and I’ll show you the man,” said the Jesuits. In a similar vein, doctors would say they can predict the future health of a person from an examination in childhood.

But at least young kids are active. The many problems resulting from physical inactivity often have their origin in early adolescence, when children slow down, participation in sport declines and sedentary activities begin to dominate.

Only 12 per cent of 10- to 18-year-olds get the recommended level of at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. The vast majority spend at least two hours a day watching television or playing computer games. One in four is obese or overweight.

The extent of the problem has been clear for some time but as the results of the Aviva Schools Fitness Challenge show, there is a gender component to the issue. While neither boys nor girls aged between 12 and 16 years are as fit as they should be, girls in particular are failing to improve with age, as one would expect.

So why is this the case? And does it matter? After all, don’t women go on to live longer than men anyway?

More sedentary

All the evidence points to girls being less involved in formal sport, and more likely to drop that involvement as the years go on. So as levels of play diminish, they become more sedentary. The relative paucity of options for team sports for girls has also been blamed, as well as the lack of attention given to women’s sports.

Cardiovascular fitness isn’t difficult to maintain through short bouts of energetic activity of the kind children engage in through play and team sports. But it’s also hard to recover once lost.

For many, declining activity leads to increased weight, which then makes it harder again to regain lost fitness.

As Prof Niall Moyna of DCU points out, keeping a high level of fitness up to age 30 and maintaining physical activity thereafter is the best way of counteracting the risk posed by chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. That can translate into an extra 25 years of healthy life.

Accidents and smoking

It’s worth noting that male life expectancy, which was already depressed by a higher rate of accidents and smoking among men, is catching up on women’s life expectancy.

The good news is that there is of late something of a sea change in attitudes to women in sport and, thereby, sport played by women. Think Stepanie Roche, or the exploits of the Irish women's rugby team, or the efforts made by the GAA to promote women's participation.

This will hopefully put an end to an era when it was considered uncool for young women to engage in sport, or when there were more women driving cars than riding bikes to college.

Government needs to play its part too, for example, by improving sports facilities, making it safe for young people to cycle in city streets and by ensuring children are active while at school. Sadly, and despite the usual promises, not much has been heard from this quarter recently; the Department of Health has been developing a national physical activity plan for some time and its Healthy Ireland Council has been quiet since it was set up almost a year ago.