Physical Activity & Sleeping Patterns of Urban School Children

Overweight and Obesity has been called a “global epidemic” by the World Health Organization. Obesity in childhood is seen to track into adulthood and is associated with several health consequences like elevated blood pressure, hypertension, type II diabetes altered blood lipid levels leading to cardiovascular diseases. These could lead to early death and can reduce life span. The principle of energy balance is that when energy intake is higher than energy expenditure it leads to weight gain due to lifestyle changes and unhealthy eating pattern. Sedentary activities like increased duration of television viewing, and playing computer games and video games, also an increased academic pressure on children to perform, has lead to the fact that children spend more time indoor than outdoors. This study therefore aims to determine the association between physical activity and sleeping pattern with body weight, body mass index and blood pressure of urban school children 6 to 8 years of age.

Gauri Shanbhag has completed her B.Sc from Mumbai University and earned her Masters in Food Science and Nutrition from SNDT Women's University in 2008 and 2010 respectively. She is currently working in a leading FMCG company in the regulatory area.