Exercise helps very obese kids feel better

By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Extremely obese children became more active -- and felt better about their bodies and about themselves -- after participating in a 14-week aerobic exercise program, UK researchers report.

While the children didn't lose weight, the fact that they became more physically active suggests the program could help them trim down over the long term, Dr. Amanda J. Daley of the University of Birmingham, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

"For us the first step was to see, 'can we get these kids more active,'" Daley said. "Unless we can get these children to feel good about activity, they're just not going to do it."

Daley and her team enrolled 81 obese adolescents aged 11 to 16 in their study, 18 of whom were morbidly obese. Thirty percent scored high on a test of depression, while 27 percent reported having recent thoughts of suicide.

Half participated in three one-on-one exercise sessions with a trainer each week for eight weeks followed by a six-week home exercise program. The 30-minute workouts involved aerobic exercise such as cycling, walking and rowing, and included counseling on behavior change.

The other study participants took part in an "exercise placebo" program, which included non-strenuous activities like playing darts and pool, and did not receive counseling.

It's crucial to include a relevant placebo group in a study like this one, Daley and her team note, because the attention a person receives by participating in an exercise program can also improve self esteem and sense of well being. Having a placebo group allowed the researchers to separate out the effects of aerobic exercise alone.

During the program and up to 14 weeks after it ended, the researchers found, the children in the exercise group consistently scored higher on a test of their sense of physical self worth. Global self worth scores were also higher during the program and up to 14 weeks after it had ended among the exercisers. And up to 14 weeks after the end of the program, kids in the exercise group remained significantly more active than children in the placebo group.

The next step, Daley said, is to find a way to make similar interventions more widely available to obese kids.

"The intervention was very intensive, it was one-to-one, three times a week for eight weeks," she noted, making it probably far to expensive to offer to every obese child in the UK. "We need to think about more pragmatic ways about delivering that kind of intervention so more children can benefit."

SOURCE: Pediatrics, November 2006.