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Fitness Testing Newsletter: 6 Aug 2007
Hi and welcome to the next monthly fitness testing newsletter. You are receiving this email as you have subscribed through the Topendsports website.
About this Issue
Included in this newsletter is an article on monitoring BMI in children. Fitness testing is not just about monitoring athletes, it has numerous applications in the health field, and particularly for the monitoring of the obesity problem we have in modern society. There is also a request for anyone who works in a laboratory who can maybe provide a fellow researcher with some data. Please contact Fatih directly if you have any queries.
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Monitoring BMI In Children Today Could Lead To Better Health
article by Dave Saunders
In a study published by the American Heart Association, it is suggested that infants who gain weight rapidly during their first week may be more likely to have weight problems later in life. This study has led to a recommendation to monitor Body Mass Index (BMI) readings in children in an effort to fight obesity through heightened awareness.
According to the American Heart Association, about 15% of children are overweight and obese. This measure is up from 5% in the 1980s. Children measuring in the top 5th percentile of BMI should be considered overweight, however this measure is not necessarily an automatic recommendation for severe diet changes, which may be especially harmful for children. As a child develops further, these measures can change without changes to diet.
Children falling between 80% and 95% are considered "at-risk" and should be monitored further.
As obesity rates continue to rise in the US, studies like these continue to gain in importance. As the child develops, potential health risks may be prevented through early awareness and lifestyle management. How this may impact cardiovascular disease and Type II Diabetes rates will likely require many years to measure.
Of course, all of these recommendations should be factored in with education and support for improved lifestyle and diet. Given the pressures of youth, it is important to not stigmatize a child and foster eating problems and poor self-image where the body mass problems may have been associated more simply with poor, and uneducated, dietary choices and insufficient physical activity.
About The Author
Dave Saunders is a certified nutritional educator, wellness coach, member of the American International Association of Nutritional Education (AIANE) and author. He is also the host of a weekly, nation-wide telephone lecture on health and nutrition.
VO2max Data Wanted
Dear readers,
My name is M. Fatih Akay, and I am an Assistant Prof. at Electrical and Electronics Engineering Dept. of Cukurova University, Türkiye. My colleague and I are currently working on predicting whether or not a person (or an athlete) is aerobically fit by using a statistical learning method. Our project requires a data set of people (or athletes) who have taken aerobic fitness on a treadmill or a cycle ergometer. The data set we need can contain parameters of each person (or an athlete), such as: age, height, weight, test time, maximal oxygen uptake, velocity at maximal oxygen uptake, heart rate at maximal oxygen uptake, lactate threshold, anaerobic threshold, the time constant for oxygen uptake kinetics, work efficiency and any other parameters required for aerobic fitness prediction and also whether the person is fit or not.
We need at least 200 samples (i.e. data from 200 different people) in the data set to use in our work. If you have any information, ideas or comments, I would love to hear from you.
Regards, M. Fatih Akay ([email protected])
About this Newsletter
Fitness testing news and latest information, including notification of updates to the ultimate source of all fitness testing information - "Rob's Home of Fitness Testing". Topics covered include methods for measuring body fat, shuttle run beep test issues, strength and power testing and much much more.
Thank you for your support of my site.
Rob Wood
Rob's Home of Fitness Testing
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