Significant numbers of children don’t do enough exercise and face poor health as adults, says the CSP. More than a third of children could face significant health problems in adulthood unless more is done to encourage families to be more active. That’s just one of a number of key findings in a new report, ‘Fit for the Future – How healthy and active are our children?’, published by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP).
At least a third of children are simply not doing enough regular physical activity (1), and approximately a third of children in the UK are overweight or obese (2). Regular exercise not only burns calories, it significantly reduces the chances of developing coronary heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes (1). The CSP has discovered that only 1 in 5 parents know how much exercise their children should be taking (3) and many parents may be overestimating how active their children actually are.