Please respond to this post with a minimum of 200 words.
From the Healthy People 2020 website, I chose the topic, Physical Activity. I chose this topic because it is an important area of health that as a nurse I will be responsible for promoting, educating and engaging my patients in. I personally like this topic because I was an athlete all my life and through college. There are plenty of positive and negative effects of physical activity on all children, adolescents, adults and the elderly. Physical activity can lower the risk of many diseases in adults and the elderly such as, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type two diabetes, certain types of cancer and even early death. It also lowers the risk of depression and risk of falls. This is an especially interesting topic for me because I have seen both good and bad effects of physical activity in my family. I have a grandmother that is 76 years old who has been in and out of the hospital for the past couple years with many health issues including falls. And on the other hand, I have a grandfather who is 72 years old and golfs almost every day.
As for children, physical activity at a young age can have many positive effects such as, improvement in cognitive skills and bone health, decreased levels of body fat, improvements in cardiorespiratory and muscle fitness, and improvement in ability to concentrate and pay attention. A big reason that children and adolescents do not get enough physical activity is because of screen time. Decreasing screen time to two hours or less a week is one of Healthy People’s objectives. One goal is replacing screen time with required physical education and recess in school. This is also something I see a lot with my nieces and nephews. They want to watch movies and sit in front of the television or they want their mom’s phone to watch YouTube and keep them quiet. There are many, many more aspects I can go into about physical activity, these are just a few.
1. What is an objective that can improve health, fitness and quality of life through daily physical activity that is not included in the Healthy People 2020 objectives?
2. What are some ways that people with factors that play a negative role in physical activity such as, low income and no access to facilities can engage in physical activity?