Ireland a 'third world nation"with regard to youth fitness 

Ireland is a "Third World" nation when it comes to the physical sporting health of its young people, according to a leading expert in the field.

Professor Niall Moyna of the Centre for Preventive Medicine in DCU is involved in a research study of which details were released yesterday and showed that signs of early onset of heart disease in 15-year-olds are linked to poor fitness.

The DCU football manager also stressed that reshaping behaviour in primary school is vital if recent trends are to be reversed.

“The Sports Council have made great strides in the last 20 years, there’s no doubt about that,” Moyna said. “But we’re still a Third World nation. I mean, we talk the talk but we’re couch-potatoes sportspeople.

“We’ve known now for years that, as a nation, our children are less active and they’re becoming heavier. Obviously we know from adults if you’re overweight and inactive it increases the likelihood that you’re going to get heart disease.

“If we’re really serious about this we have to educate kids,” he warned.

“Asking a child to switch on when they get to secondary school aged 12, it’s too late.”

The study involves measuring the fitness of a number of secondary school students and conducting tests to attempt to predict heart disease. The results indicate a worrying trend.

Moyna explained: “What we found was that compared to the moderately active and high-fit kids, if you were low-fit you had a higher body fat — 23 percent versus 10 — significantly higher blood pressure and higher levels of circulating bad cholesterol.

“It basically shows not alone did the 15-year-olds have risk factors for heart disease, they actually had the disease itself.”

Moyna called for an overhaul of how Physical Education is taught at schools and criticised the Department of Education’s inaction in light of evidence of increasing obesity of young people due to poor lifestyles.

“I think the inertia in the Department of Education is mind-boggling. We live in a different world than we did even 10 years ago, but we are not moving with the times at all.

“I don’t like the words ‘PE teacher’. It has the connotation of sport and elite sport and it should be about so much more than that. That’s only 10% who like elite sport.

“The other 90%, we have to find a way of getting them regularly active so it has a positive effect on both their physical and mental health. I would like to see dedicated teachers in primary schools and get kids to change their behaviour. We’ve got to get them to adopt healthy behaviour when they’re at a young age.

Moyna recommends scrapping the biology and PE curriculums and combining them into a life science course.

“We need to contextualise biology, learn about it from the effects of alcohol, stress, tobacco, diet and inactivity so they understand what happens when they do these things.

“Learn how they all affect our organ systems because when you leave secondary school you leave with your body and you forget 95% of the rest of it.

“Most students think, ‘I’m young, I’m healthy’ but we’re showing you’re not young and healthy, you actually have heart disease. You have clinical manifestations of heart disease at 15 years of age because you’re inactive and you’re overweight.”

And he believes making it a Leaving Certificate subject with CAO points on offer is the best way to make a difference and to get parents to heed the warnings contained in the study.

“I suggested five years ago we give you €5,000 if you’re in the top one percent of Europeans for fitness,” Moyna added. “Because if you’re in the top one percent of Europeans for aerobic fitness the likelihood of you being obese is reduced. It has to be a Leaving Cert subject.

“You can say to a parent, ‘Johnny or Mary is overweight or they’re unfit’, but it doesn’t even resonate. You say to a parent, ‘By the way, Johnny has a wee problem here in the artery and that increases risk for a stroke’, they listen then. Hopefully this is a wake-up call not just for parents but for our educational system, our healthcare system.”

Prof Niall Moyna was at the Aviva Stadium to launch the 2015 Schools’ Fitness Challenge to first, second, third and transition year students which aims to highlight the importance of cardiovascular fitness from an early age.