Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Leisure-Time Physical Activity May Improve Mental Health in Teens

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by News Medical.

A recent study led by the University of Eastern Finland suggests that regular leisure-time physical activity, even in small doses, is associated with lower odds of depression, anxiety, chronic stress, and school psychologist visits among Finnish adolescents. However, the relationship between active school transport, i.e., walking or cycling to school, and mental health remains inconclusive. The findings were published in the prestigious Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.

Regular physical activity can improve mental health through various pathways, such as increasing the production of “feel-good” hormones, enhancing sleep quality, and boosting self-confidence. While mental health problems are common, few large population-based studies have examined the relationship between physical activity and adolescent mental health. Furthermore, it is currently unknown whether active school transport can have beneficial effects on mental health.

The researchers observed that leisure-time moderate-to-vigorous physical activity was associated with better mental health among nearly 33,000 15-to-16-year-old adolescents. Compared with inactivity, as little as 30 minutes of weekly physical activity was associated with 17% lower odds of chronic stress symptoms. In addition, the odds of depression and anxiety symptoms were 22% and 32% lower, respectively, for adolescents who reported an hour of weekly physical activity. The most physically active youth (i.e., those reporting at least 4 hours of physical activity a week) had the lowest odds of mental health symptoms.

The association of active school transport with mental health differed from leisure-time physical activity. No associations were found between low-to-moderate doses (less than 30 minutes) of daily active school transport and mental health. However, walking or cycling to school for more than 30 minutes a day was, surprisingly, associated with higher odds of depression symptoms and school psychologist visits.

The study was conducted in collaboration with the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and the nationwide School Health Promotion study.

Source: News Medical
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230426/Leisure-time-physical-activity-may-improve-mental-health-in-teens.aspx

Which High School Sports Cause Kids the Most Injuries?

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

Fewer high school athletes are getting hurt playing sports, but those who do are more likely to suffer severe injuries that require surgery or a timeout from their chosen sport, new research shows.

Which teens are most at risk? Those who participate in football, girls' soccer and boys' wrestling, the study authors found. Knee and ankle sprains and strains, along with head injuries such as concussions, were the most common injuries seen.

Exactly why injuries are becoming more severe isn't fully understood, but having kids specialize in sports too early may play a role. That can lead to an increase in overuse injuries, overtraining and burnout, said study co-author Jordan Pizzarro, a medical student at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, in Washington, D.C.

For the study, the researchers tapped into 2015 to 2019 injury data from 100 high schools. These schools have athletic trainers who report injuries for five boys' and four girls' sports.

Overall, there were 15,531 injuries that occurred during 6.8 million athletic exposures. (An athletic exposure is defined as one athlete participating in one practice or competition during which an injury could potentially occur.) This equals an overall rate of nearly 2.3 injuries per 1,000 athletic exposures, which can be extrapolated to 5.2 million sports-related injuries among high schoolers nationally.

Most injuries took place during games. Overall, the injury rate was higher in boys' sports compared to girls' sports, and 3.5% of all injuries were fractures, and these mainly occurred in boys' baseball, basketball and football. Overall, just over 6% of injuries — most often from wrestling, girls' basketball and boys' baseball — required surgery.

In total, 39% of sports injuries resulted in athletes taking less than one week off from their sport, while 34% of injuries required taking up to three weeks off to heal. Seven percent of injuries required athletes to take more than three weeks off to heal, and nearly 21% of injuries led to medical disqualification for the season or career.

Still, the new data isn't a reason for kids to stop playing sports.

"Sports build endurance and stamina and help with growth and maturity," Pizzarro said. Instead, parents should talk to the school or coach about pre-season training programs that may help stave off injuries among young athletes.

The new research was scheduled for presentation at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) annual meeting, held in Las Vegas from March 7 to 11. Research presented at medical conferences should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/sports-injuries-2659479745.html

Physical Activity Can Help Mental Health in Pre-Teen Years

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by ScienceDaily.

Regular physical activity can improve adolescents' mental health and help with behavioral difficulties, research suggests. Engaging in regular moderate to vigorous physical activity at age 11 was associated with better mental health between the ages of 11 and 13, the study found.

Physical activity was also associated with reduced hyperactivity and behavioral problems, such as loss of temper, fighting with other children, lying, and stealing, in young people.

Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Bristol, and Georgia in the United States explored data from the Children of the 90s study (also known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children; ALSPAC). They looked at the levels of physical activity of 4755 11-year-olds which was measured using devices.

The young people and their parents reported on their levels of depressive symptoms from age 11 and at age 13 years. Participants' parents and teachers were also quizzed about the young people's general behavior and emotional difficulties.

The researchers found that higher levels of moderate or intense physical activity had a small but detectable association with decreases in depressive symptoms and emotional difficulties.

Regular exercise had a small but detectable association with reduced behavioral problems, even after controlling for other possible influences, the study found.

The findings suggest regular moderate and intense physical activity may have a small protective influence on mental health in early adolescents, researchers say.

The study was published in Mental Health and Physical Activity.

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230301210307.htm

Study Links Exercise Intensity, Attentional Control in Late-Adolescent Girls

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by NewsWise.

Adolescent girls who engage in more moderate and vigorous physical activity each day have better attentional control, a new study finds. The study focused on girls and boys aged 15-18.

“Attentional control is an aspect of inhibitory control. We can think of inhibitory control as our ability to control attention when distracted, and our ability to control acting on an impulse,” said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign kinesiology and community health professor Dominika Pindus, who led the study. “Studies have found that inhibitory control is related to better academic achievement.”

Pindus and her colleagues used baseline data from a randomized controlled trial of high school students in New South Wales, Australia, to explore potential sex differences in the relationship between physical activity and cognition. Study co-author David Lubans of the University of Newcastle in NSW led the original study. The data collected in that research included measures of daily physical activity volume and intensity as recorded by accelerometers worn on the wrist for up to seven days.

The participants also engaged in computerized cognitive tasks. “For this study, we focused on the variability of participants’ response times across trials. This measure helps us understand the efficiency of higher attentional control,” Pindus said.

Older adolescents’ accuracy and speed are comparable to adults’ performance on the attentional control tasks, Pindus said.

The researchers evaluated the intensity of the students’ physical activity over time using a measure called an “intensity gradient,” which offers a broad picture of how each individual accumulates intense activity over the course of the day, Pindus said.

After controlling for other variables like body mass index and aerobic fitness, the team found that the intensity gradient corresponded with the girls’ ability to maintain their attention on a task in the face of distracting information in the cognitive trials. The girls who accumulated less intense physical activity over the course of the day took longer and were less accurate on tests that involved ignoring distracting information, the researchers report.

The findings are detailed in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.

Source: NewWise
https://www.newswise.com/articles/study-links-exercise-intensity-attentional-control-in-late-adolescent-girls

Three or More Concussions Linked with Worse Brain Function in Later Life

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by ScienceDaily.

Experiencing three or more concussions is linked with worsened brain function in later life, according to major new research.

The study -- the largest of its kind -- also found having just one moderate-to-severe concussion, or traumatic brain injury (TBI), can have a long-term impact on brain function, including memory.

Led by teams at the University of Oxford and the University of Exeter, the research included data from more than 15,000 participants of the online PROTECT study, who were aged between 50 and 90 and based in the UK. They reported the severity and frequency of concussions they had experienced throughout their lives and completed annual, computerized tests for brain function.

Published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, the paper found that people who reported three or more concussions had significantly worse cognitive function, which got successively worse with each subsequent concussion after that. Attention and completion of complex tasks were particularly affected.

Lead investigator Dr. Vanessa Raymont, from the University of Oxford, said: "We know that head injuries are a major risk factor for dementia, and this large-scale study gives the greatest detail to date on a stark finding -- the more times you injure your brain in life, the worse your brain function could be as you age.

"Our research indicates that people who have experienced three or more even mild episodes of concussion should be counseled on whether to continue high-risk activities. We should also encourage organizations operating in areas where head impact is more likely to consider how they can protect their athletes or employees."

The team found that participants who reported three episodes of even mild concussion throughout their lives had significantly worse attention and ability to complete complex tasks. Those who had four or more mild concussion episodes also showed worsened processing speed and working memory. Each additional reported concussion was linked to progressively worse cognitive function.

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230130213948.htm

Regular Aerobic Exercise Reduces Depression in Teens

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.

A team of researchers at the University of Hong Kong, working with one colleague from Sun Yat Sen University in China and another from Georgia State University in the U.S., has found that regular aerobic exercise can reduce symptoms in teens found to be suffering from depression.

In their paper published in JAMA Pediatrics, the group describes analyzing data from several medical databases to learn more about the impact of regular exercise on young people.

Prior research has suggested that regular exercise can provide a wide range of health benefits for most people, including brightening mood and reducing mental stress. In this new effort, the researchers found that regular exercise for young people over age 13 with depression can lead to a reduction in symptoms.

For this study, the focus was particularly on changes relating to symptoms in young people diagnosed with depression who have begun an exercise activity such as swimming, dancing or running.

The researchers found that engaging in regular aerobic physical activity significantly reduced symptoms of depression in young people over 13 diagnosed with depression. The researchers also found that the activity had to be regular, such as three times a week, and it had to continue; otherwise, symptoms returned.

The group also conducted a secondary analysis that focused on which young people would reap the most mental health benefits from exercise. They found it to be those young people over 13 who had already been diagnosed with depression.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-01-regular-aerobic-depression-teens.html

Basketball Better for Building Stronger Bones in Youth Athletes Than Track

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds.

According to a recent study, youth athletes who play multidirectional sports like basketball, instead of unidirectional sports like track, are able to build stronger bones that decrease their risk of bone injury in adulthood.

The findings are in line with other recommendations that say that younger children should play a variety of sports that require them to move in various directions, then wait until they’re older to switch to a sport that they want to hone in on. By then, they’re more likely to have a stronger structural foundation, which supports less risk of stress injury.

“There is a common misperception that kids need to specialize in a single sport to succeed at higher levels. However, recent data indicate that athletes who specialize at a young age are at a greater risk of an overuse injury and are less likely to progress to higher levels of competition,” says Stuart Warden, associate dean for research and Chancellor’s Professor in the Indiana University School of Health and Human Sciences, in a statement.

In this study, Warden and team used high-resolution imaging to assess the shin bone by the ankle and bones in the feet, where bone stress injuries often are found in runners. They discovered that athletes who did running as well as multidirectional sports had 10-20% stronger bones than those who just ran.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/basketball-bone-strength-children-track/

Sports Like Soccer, Basketball Better for Young Athletes' Bone Health Than Running Alone

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by ScienceDaily.

Young athletes who participate in multidirectional sports instead of specializing in a unidirectional sport like running can build stronger bones that may be at less risk for bone injuries as adults, according to a new study from Indiana University researchers.

Published in the American College of Sports Medicine's Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, the study examined Division I and II female cross-country runners, who often experience bone stress injuries like stress fractures. The researchers found that athletes who ran and participated in sports that require movement in many directions -- such as basketball or soccer -- when younger had better bone structure and strength than those who solely ran, swam, or cycled.

As a result, the study's findings support recommendations that athletes delay specialization in running and play multi-directional sports when younger to build a more robust skeleton -- and potentially prevent bone stress injuries.

"Our research shows that the runners who played multidirectional sports when younger had stronger bones as collegiate athletes, which puts them at less risk for bone stress injuries, including stress fractures," said Stuart Warden, associate dean for research and Chancellor's Professor in the IU School of Health and Human Sciences at IUPUI. "We want to ensure people have better, stronger bones as they grow, become adolescents, and go through life. Specializing in one sport at too young of an age means they are more likely to get injured and not make it at the collegiate and professional levels."

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/10/221011183910.htm

Concussion Aftermath Could Drag Down Teens' Grades

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

Efforts to prevent concussions from happening at school or in school-related sports activities may help keep teens from lagging behind in their academics.

In a new study, researchers at the University of Washington found that those who had a recent concussion could be 25% more likely than classmates to be in poor academic standing.

"History of concussion was significantly associated with poor academic standing and experiencing multiple concussions could be particularly harmful on student outcomes," according to study author Julian Takagi-Stewart, of Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center in Seattle, and colleagues.

About 2 million U.S. youth suffer a concussion each year. The researchers wanted to learn whether there was a link between a history of these temporary brain injuries and teens' academic standing.

For the study, they analyzed data on more than 10,000 teens who were part of the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System Survey, which monitors health risks among U.S. students.

In all, about 15% of high school students reported having had at least one sports and activity-related concussion during the previous year.

In all, 79% of students said they were in good academic standing, the findings showed.

Having at least one concussion in the past year was linked with a 25% higher risk of poor academic standing. This link was stronger for students with repeated concussions, according to the report published online Sept. 12 in the journal Injury Prevention.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/b-9-14-concussion-aftermath-could-drag-down-a-teens-grades-2658197510.html

Being More Physically Active Does Not Help Girls Lose Body Fat

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds.

Girls do not shed pounds from being more physically active, according to new research. A team in Norway says their figures are not controlled by how much time they spend running, walking, or in the gym. While exercise has major health benefits, the effects differ between the sexes. Boys lose body fat but only after they reach adolescence.

“In girls, we found no connection between their physical activity and amount of body fat. Increased physical activity didn’t lead to less body fat in the girls, and body fat had no effect on changes in their physical activity,” says first study author Tonje Zahl-Thanem in a university release.

In boys, the amount of body fat influences exercise levels, with more resulting in less, respectively.

The findings are based on almost 1,000 Norwegian children, who researchers examined every two years between the ages of six and 14.

“In sum, we found a link between physical activity, sedentary lifestyle and fat percentage in boys, but not in girls,” Steinsbekk concludes.

The analysis was published in the International Journal of Obesity.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/physically-active-girls-body-fat/