{"id":143708,"date":"2018-11-14T10:21:13","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T15:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=143708"},"modified":"2018-11-14T10:28:32","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T15:28:32","slug":"5-takeaways-exercise-guidelines-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2018\/11\/5-takeaways-exercise-guidelines-age\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Takeaways on Exercise Guidelines by Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several years ago, the University of Connecticut\u2019s Linda Pescatello, and 16 other top researchers throughout the nation, agreed to review and expand existing physical activity guidelines\u00a0for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The resulting second edition of the\u00a0Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans<\/a>\u00a0updates the 2008 edition.<\/p>\n

The guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations for adults and youth ages 3 through 17\u00a0to safely get the physical activity they need to stay healthy. Scientific evidence shows that physical activity has many health benefits, independent of other healthy behaviors, such as good nutrition.<\/p>\n

New evidence shows that physical activity has\u00a0immediate health benefits. For example, physical activity can reduce anxiety and blood pressure and improve quality of sleep and insulin sensitivity.<\/p>\n

Although the first guidelines stated that only 10-minute bouts of physical activity counted toward meeting the guidelines, the new edition removes this requirement to encourage Americans to move more frequently throughout the day.<\/p>\n

1. Preschool-aged children. New advice for children ages 3 through 5 notes that children should be active throughout the day to enhance growth and development. Adults caring for children this age should encourage active play (light, moderate, or vigorous intensity) and aim for at least three hours per day.<\/p>\n

2. Youth\u00a0ages 6 through 17. Each day, youths need at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity to attain the most health benefits from physical activity. Most activity can be aerobic, like walking, running, or anything that makes their hearts beat faster. They also need activities that make their muscles and bones strong, like climbing on playground equipment, playing basketball, and jumping rope.<\/p>\n

For youth, physical activity can help improve\u00a0cognition, bone health, fitness, and heart health. It can also reduce the risk of depression.<\/p>\n

3. Adults. To attain the most health benefits from physical activity, adults need at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, like brisk walking or fast dancing, each week. Adults also need muscle-strengthening activity, like lifting weights or doing push-ups, at least two days each week.<\/p>\n

For adults, new evidence shows a strong relationship between increased sedentary behavior and increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and all-cause mortality. All physical activity, especially moderate-to-vigorous activity, can help offset these risks.<\/p>\n

Physical activity helps prevent eight types of cancer (bladder, breast, colon,\u00a0endometrium, esophagus, kidney, stomach, and\u00a0lung); reduces the risk of\u00a0dementia (including\u00a0Alzheimer\u2019s disease), all-cause mortality, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and depression; and improves bone health, physical function, and quality of life.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 For pregnant women, physical activity reduces the risk of\u00a0postpartum depression.<\/p>\n

5. For older adults, physical activity also lowers the risk of falls and\u00a0injuries from falls.<\/p>\n

For those with existing health conditions, evidence shows that physical activity can help\u00a0manage more health conditions\u00a0that Americans already have. For example, physical activity can decrease pain for those with osteoarthritis, reduce disease progression for hypertension and type 2 diabetes, reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, and improve cognition for those with dementia, multiple sclerosis, ADHD, and Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn’s Linda Pescatello and other top researchers nationwide authored the latest edition of the\u00a0Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, released this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":143740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2224,1715,2231,2076,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-143708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cahnr","category-community-impact","category-health-well-being","category-research","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 14:02:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143708"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143752,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143708\/revisions\/143752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/143740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143708"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=143708"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=143708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}