Physical activity, diet and other behavioural interventions for improving cognition and school achievement in children and adolescents with obesity or overweight.

Anne Martin,John Sproule,Yvonne Laird,David H Saunders,Josephine N Booth,John J Reilly

doi:10.1002/14651858.cd009728.pub4

Abstract

Physical activity, diet and other behavioural interventions for improving cognition and school achievement in children and adolescents with obesity or overweight.

Highlights

The global prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity is high
School-based dietary interventions may benefit general school achievement in children with obesity. These findings might assist health and education practitioners to make decisions related to promoting physical activity and healthy eating in schools
We reported the mean di erence and standardised mean di erence of the intervention e ect, to allow comparison with studies included in Comparison 2

Summary

Introduction

The global prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity is high. Lifestyle changes towards a healthy diet, increased physical activity and reduced sedentary activities are recommended to prevent and treat obesity. Evidence suggests that changing these health behaviours can benefit cognitive function and school achievement in children and adolescents in general. There are various theoretical mechanisms that suggest that children and adolescents with excessive body fat may benefit from these interventions. Child and adolescent overweight and obesity are commonly identified by age- and gender-specific body mass index (BMI) percentiles, BMI standard deviation scores, and waist circumference (WC) percentiles relative to a reference population (Reilly 2010; Rolland-Cachera 2011). Overweight: BMI or WC ≥ 85th percentile to 95th percentile, BMI > one standard deviation above the average; 2. The IOTF BMI cut-o s were reformulated to allow BMI to be expressed as standard deviation or percentile (Cole 2012)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion