CHICAGO -- A study of 17 middle school students suggests that
physical fitness gains made by obese children who participated
in a lifestyle-focused physical education class during the
school year were lost after the three-month summer break,
according to a report in the June issue of Archives of
Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA)/Archives journals. Children
increasingly live in an environment with reduced amounts of
physical activity coupled with easy access to calories,
according to background information in the article that was
posted on the Web site www.medicalnewstoday.com. This can result
in obesity, poor cardiovascular fitness, insulin resistance,
type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension. Dr. Aaron L.
Carrel and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Children’s
Hospital in Madison, WI, previously conducted a randomized
controlled trial in which 17 overweight children over the age of
12 were assigned to participate in a lifestyle-f