Exercise – Teens – Obesity

Teen Girls Don’t Exercise

By the time they finish high school, many American girls have lost whatever semblance of being physically active they had when they were younger.

A new study finds that the amount of regular exercise girls get in their spare time drops by more than 80 percent between elementary school and late adolescence. Black teens reported a 100 percent falloff in regular physical activity each week. Their white peers fared a little better, but even their exercise scores dropped by nearly two-thirds over the 10-year period.

Black girls were three times as likely to get pregnant by the eighth year of the study – 22.3 percent vs. 7.5 percent. Pregnancy was cited as a reason for lack of exercise for blacks, but not for whitesThe findings help explain why obesity, Type II diabetes and inactivity arehigher among black women than among white women, which raises their risk of heart disease, stroke, colon cancer, osteoporosis and other health problems tied to exercise. Some 15 percent of American youth are overweight, triple the number since 1970s.

SOURCE: (Adapted) Adam Marcus, HealthScoutNews Reporter

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