Earlier this week ParticipACTION released their annual Report Card on the Physical Activity of Canadian Children and Youth (full disclosure: I’m on the Report Card Research Committee).  The full details can found here.  The Report Card itself is important, but not terribly surprising – Canadian kids still sit too much, and get too little physical activity (sleep is ok, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement there as well).

Along with the Report Card, this year ParticipACTION also released an expert statement on physical activity and brain health in children and youth.  I believe that this expert statement will be extremely useful for advocates of childhood physical activity.  Almost every time I speak with a physical education teacher they ask if I have any information on how physical activity might benefit things other than physical health.  For understandable reasons, education policymakers are focused on grades and academic performance, with physical health being somewhat of an afterthought.  As a result, they don’t always see the value of increasing physical activity, if they think that means less time on more “academic” subjects.

However, as pointed out in the expert statement, physical activity has a whole list of benefits related to cognition, brain function, and mental health.  In other words, more physically active kids tend to do better in school (and have better mental health), so encouraging kids to be physically active is also likely to help them academically. These benefits are seen for kids with typical development, but may be even larger for kids with brain-based disabilities.

The benefits are outlined in the below video, and in the expert statement itself. The statement also has useful suggestions for ways that parents, teachers, healthcare workers, coaches and policy makers can use this info to improve brain health in children and youth.  I encourage everyone to check out the below video, and to forward the expert statement any educators in your life.