Leading Education - Fitness uddannelser

Indledning af Leading Education ©

Følgende artikel giver et godt billede af et samfund (USA), når mangel på fysisk aktivitet og sund kost får konsekvenser. Artiklen beskriver at ca.75% af amerikanske unge ikke er egnede til militær tjeneste, grundet tre forhold: Manglende uddannelse ,en kriminel fortid og at de er fysik uegnede. Den sidste del kommer til udtryk i de komplikationer som fysisk inaktivitet giver som f.eks. overvægt, fedme, diabetes 2, hjertesygdomme, forhøjet kolesterol og knogleskørhed etc. – i virkeligheden en sørgelig historie.

USA er tilsyneladende et samfund der lider af sin gen manglende evne til at samle de dårligt stillede i samfundet op, holdt sammen med den dekadence som præger den vestlige kultur, når overflodsamfundet næsten pr. automatik genererer passivitet, ligegyldighed og laissez faire mentalitet.

Artiklen giver et godt indblik i hvad der kan ske, og det er endda på trods af nationale initiativer for at imødegå denne uheldige udvikling.

Report says 27 percent of potential recruits too overweight to serve

In a recent report by “Mission: Readiness, Military Leaders for Kids” entitled “Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve,” the authors say the Pentagon has released statistics suggesting that 75 percent of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are currently unable to enlist in the United States military. The report identifies three crucial reasons explaining this dramatic deficit in military eligible candidates: 1) inadequate education; 2) history of criminal conviction; and 3) physical unfitness. There should be grave concern regarding all three reasons/explanations, and the above-cited report primarily addresses educational strategies for ameliorating the problem.

The lack of physical fitness is clearly linked to ACSM’s mission and has surfaced as an important topic in the context of the current health care reform debate in Congress.

According to data from U.S. military sources, 27 percent of young Americans are too overweight or obese to join the military. In addition, approximately 15,000 recruits fail their entrance physicals each year because they are overweight or obese. An additional 32 percent of these potential young enlistees have health problems that keep them from serving in the military. Many of these problems are chronic conditions/diseases often associated with inactivity and other components of health-related fitness (or lack thereof).

This current enlistment crisis for a voluntary military force appears to have been building over the past decade – perhaps several decades. Examining the trends from the early 1970s through the mid-2000s, the prevalence of overweight and obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart disease, along with declines in healthy eating and active living, reveals a shift of these trends in the wrong direction. Chronic diseases/conditions are increasing, while behaviors of healthy eating and active living are decreasing in prevalence with 18- to 29-year-olds in the United States (National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys – NHANES).

The numbers prove it. The percent of overweight people in this age group has gone from approximately 20 percent (1971-74) to over 30 percent (2005-06). The proportion who are obese has jumped from 8 percent to more than 22 percent during the same time period. In contrast, only 39 percent of U.S. adults ages 18 to 29 years reported engaging in regular leisure-time aerobic physical activity in 1999-2000, with 36 percent reporting this behavior in 2005-2006. Twenty-nine percent of this same U.S. age group reported strength training at least twice per week in 1999-2000, with 28 percent reporting this behavior in 2005-2006. This is a relatively flat trend in spite of public health efforts to promote the importance of strength training.

What is perhaps most disconcerting is that despite the known health benefits of regular physical activity in reducing risks of premature mortality, coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, hypertension and osteoporosis, the trend in physical activity, particularly among the military candidate age group, has declined or remained flat. Additionally, recent reports on the U.S. trends in coronary heart disease death rates, which have fallen over the past few decades, have apparently leveled off and possibly even show a slight upturn. Deaths in the middle-age population have been driving this trend. This raises the suspicion that if these trends in inactivity and obesity continue, then rates and deaths due to type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease will also continue to rise. Young adults might then become more affected by these risk factors and conditions, and thus less likely to be eligible for military service.

Enter health care reform. In the wake of the above alarming health data, the federal government, through various Department of Health and Human Services agencies (National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Agency for Health Care Quality Research, and others) has mounted a major public health initiative targeting healthy eating and active living on the heels of the release and promotion of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. This effort is in concert with private foundations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Kellogg Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In the context of this partnership approach to a comprehensive public health campaign, ACSM, along with other partners, has advocated for and informed Congress about the importance of integrating preventive care practice, training and reimbursement into the continuum of health care delivery. Highlighting the Exercise is Medicine™ initiative and the ACSM American Fitness Index™ (a data-driven tool to assist U.S. metropolitan areas in moving their communities to better health), these efforts can further inform decision-makers about which evidence-based approaches to promoting physical activity should be integrated into the evolving U.S. health care delivery system. Linking public health community-based efforts with promotion of physical activity – starting with the recommendations from the Guide to Community Preventive Services and clinical evidence-based approaches to assessing and counseling for physical activity – will ensure that current health trends among enlistment-eligible young adults will turn around, eventually resulting in a healthier and much more robust military service candidate pool.

References
Mission: Readiness – Military Leaders for Kids. “Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve”, 2009.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Chartbook/Health, United States, 2008. ‘Overweight and Obesity’, P. 32-33; ‘Leisure-time physical activity and strength training’ pp. 34-35. DHHS, 2009.

Gregg EW, Cheng YJ, Cadwell BL, Imperatore G, Williams DE, Flegal KM, et al. Secular trends in cardiovascular disease risk factors according to body mass index in U.S. adults. JAMA 2005;293(15):1868-74.

CDC. Prevalence of physical activity, including lifestyle activities among adults – United States, 1994-2004, MMWR 2005;52:764-9.

McLaughlin R and Wittert G. The obesity epidemic: implications for recruitment and retention of defence force personnel. Obesity Reviews 2009;10:693-699.