Krueger_J_SPHE461_Week5

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American Military University *

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461

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Health Science

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Dec 6, 2023

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docx

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6

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Regain Your Success Jacob A. Krueger SPHE461 Current Issues and Trends in Fitness and Wellness Instructor: Leslie McManus 02 June 2023 1
Regain Your Success Transcript: Obese Children in America Good morning class and Mrs. McManus. Today I will be discussing an increased health condition in the United States that is becoming prevalent amongst our children. The health condition I will be going further into detail with is obesity caused by a sedentary lifestyle influenced by electronic devices. If we cannot force our children to play outside on a daily basis due to a hectic work schedule, weather or lack of supervision, then we need to explore fitness trends that will let children maintain a daily fitness goal while remaining indoors. I will also discuss how specific virtual reality (VR) games can help combat the rise of obesity within the population of children. Approximately 18.5% of American children that are between the ages of 2 years old through 19 years old are medically classified as obese. (Hales, 2020) Even though that percentage perceives to be a small number, it still means that there are approximately 13.7 million obese children in the United States. Childhood obesity comes with an increased risk of developing a wide range of health diseases. Cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal problems, and type 2 diabetes are a couple examples of chronic health conditions obese children are exposed to developing. (Daniels, 2015) If obesity is not corrected in children who are already exposed to it, then it will continue into their adult life while increasing the risk of obesity-related health issues. The rise in childhood obesity can be easily associated with a sedentary lifestyle cause by the increased usage of electronic devices such as cell phones, tablets and video games. Unlike 10-20 years ago when the majority of children spent a large portion of their days outdoors running around with their friends or riding bicycles from one end of the neighborhood to the other, children in the current day are spending their days cooped up indoors engaged with some 2
Regain Your Success type of screen time. It is recommended that children who are 6 years and older to have only 1-2 hours of screen time daily. (Radesky, 2016) The reality is that American children are spending a surplus of daily time engaged on an electronic device, instead of playing outdoors with friends or siblings or even parents. The CDC has reported that children who are between the ages of 8-10 are averaging 6 hours of daily screen time and children who are between the ages of 11-14 are averaging 9 hours of daily screen time. (OSF, 2020) That is an excess of 4 to 7 hours of daily screen time, meaning that some children are spending over a third of their day engaged in screen time. So how do we incorporate daily exercise within the population of children and have it fun and adapted to their lifestyles? There is a various amount of virtual reality video games that are accessible to children to play that incorporates a workout without realizing the children are even working out. So why is it that parents will sit their children on a tablet watching endless children shows to satisfy the child when we can invest into their futures by doing some research into video games that can provide fitness for them? There is a virtual reality video game headset that is called an Oculus Quest 2 that offers many games that can burn calories as you play. The importance of using video games as a means for fitness is that it may be the only way that we can reach our children and have them wanting to do physical activity on a daily basis. If you ask the average child to go out for a run, ride their bike with you, or just take a walk, majority of them will respond with a “why” or “do I have to?”. Now go and ask that same child if they want to play a video game with you and I bet the answer will be an excitingly “YES!”. Through the use of video games, you can just simply ask them if they want to play one of the games that incorporates fitness and they wouldn’t even know that they are getting a workout while playing. 3
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