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Cover Story - Winter 2009

Vol. 2 No. 1

The Cost of Being an Inactive Kid

By Matt Barron

One might expect Adam Baxter-Jones’s children to be more active than most, considering that their researcher dad spends his days exploring how a couch-potato lifestyle impacts the physical development of kids.

Like most children her age, however, his 13-year-old daughter isn’t as active as she needs to be for optimal development. Recently Baxter- Jones tried to motivate her with a new scientific finding, and her response would be familiar to any parent: “Shut up, Dad.”

In an age where gaming and TV increasingly rule children’s time, the research of Baxter-Jones and his University of Saskatchewan colleagues reveals the surprising costs of being a couchpotato kid. In two of the longest-running studies in the world on the subject, the researchers show how inactivity can adversely and irreparably alter a child’s body for life.

The reality, according to Baxter-Jones, is that more than half of Canadian children aged 5 to 17 aren’t active enough for optimal health and development.

While many research studies puzzle out the effects of genetics and nutrition on skeletal and muscle health, Baxter-Jones’s research shows that physical activity is in some ways just as important as these factors in sculpting a person’s body early in life.

This finding began with the work of Don Bailey, professor emeritus at the U of S, who initiated two important growth studies, the first dating back to the 1960s.

The second, called the pediatric bone-mineral accrual study, has followed approximately 200 children since 1991 and resulted in more than 50 research papers. It’s the most comprehensive long-term database in the world on bone development in the mid-childhood to early-adult years.

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