“It is important to increase and maintain the most important factor in our lives; health; in the most important period of life; childhood,” says Kristján Þór Magnússon, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sports, Leisure Studies and Social Education; who was the first student ever to defend a doctoral thesis in Sports and Health studies at the University of Iceland.
Magnússon’s doctoral research was partly based on the intervention research “The lifestyle of 7 – 9 year old children” that was meant to develop ways to increase physical activity and encourage balanced diets for children this age. “The reasons for the research were mainly results of a study on the health of 9 and 15 year old children in the years 2003 and 2004. The study showed that too few children were as physically active on a daily basis as the recommended paradigm indicated,” says Magnússon, and points out the children that are overweight have rapidly increased in number at the beginning of this century.
The research included intervention in three elementary schools during the years 2006 – 2008 to counteract sedentariness and unhealthy lifestyles. The main results of the intervention was that it that little or limited impact on the children’s physical activity, stamina or physique during this two-year period even though the measures lead to increased physical activity during school-time. Further actions are needed. However, Magnússon points out that the results indicate that it is possible to integrate physical activities better with the elementary schools’ curricula without it being at the expense of other subjects.
“It is most certainly a worthy project to find and develop ways that lead to increased physical activity and healthier lifestyles for our young ones. Our conditions are similar to other western countries where sedentariness and increased availability of cheap energy-rich food is mixed into an unhealthy lifestyle cocktail. It is therefore likely that methods developed in Iceland, leading to increased physical activity and a balanced diet, will not only benefit Icelanders but also the countries around us,” says Magnússon.
