Lack of physical activity during childhood can lead to heart attacks and strokes in early adulthood, even in people with normal weight and blood pressure. This is confirmed by an investigation by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). The study, carried out as part of Children of the 90s, one of the largest cohorts in the world, focused on investigating the association between sedentary time – in an age range of 11 to 24 years – and heart measurements, taking into account factors such as age, sex, blood pressure, body fat, smoking, physical activity and socioeconomic status.
As a result, it has been seen that being sedentary during childhood increases the likelihood of suffering a heart attack or a cardiovascular accident from the age of 24. This is so because the lack of physical exercise, according to the study, increases the mass of the wall of the left ventricle of the heart. As indicated by Dr. Manuel Anguita, spokesperson for the Spanish Society of Cardiology (SEC): “Once the amount of fat on the wall of the ventricle increases, the heart weighs more.” Andrew Agbaje, PhD at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, says that “children and teenagers need to move more to protect their long-term health, and their parents should limit their time exposure on screens”.
The study was carried out using smart watches that measure the cumulative effect of sedentary time. These watches were placed on 766 children (55% were girls and 45% were boys) for seven days at ages 11, 15 and 24. The watches showed that at age 11 the children were sedentary for an average of 362 minutes a day, rising to 474 minutes a day in adolescence (age 15) and 531 minutes a day in young adulthood ( 24 years). Therefore, by the time they reached early adulthood, at age 24, the time of inactivity could reach nine hours a day. Through echocardiography, the weight of the left ventricle of the heart has been evaluated over the years.
Anguita points out that exercising increases the amount of blood that leaves the heart with each beat. That is, it does not increase the mass of the thickness of the wall of the left ventricle, but increases the internal diameter of the cavity and, therefore, the volume of blood that it is able to accommodate and expel with each beat, with which more resistance is achieved. On the contrary, being sedentary can trigger hypertrophy and massively increase the thickness of the wall of the ventricle and, with this, that there is a greater risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure or sudden death.
