Role of Exercise and Nutrition on Cardiopulmonary Fitness.

ABSTRACT

Physical fitness is the prime criterion for survival, to achieve any goal and to lead a healthy life. Effect of exercise to have a good physical fitness is well known since ancient Vedas. Our aim is to find out the effect of exercise and nutrition on growing children with scientific records. So, we have selected Residential and Non-residential school children with age between 12 and 16 years. Obviously, Residential school children will get recommended nutritious food and they are undergoing regular physical exercise training. Subjects were divided into two groups. Group I is residential and group II is non-residential, each of having 100 students and they were subjected for cardiopulmonary fitness tests. Physical fitness can be assessed by suitable cardiopulmonary fitness parameters like Physical Fitness Index (PFI in %) and maximal oxygen consumption that is VO2max (ml/kg/min) by using Harvard step test. Results were compared and subjected to statistical analysis for Z test. VO2 max (Mean ± SD) in residential was 66.03 ± 7.06 and in non-residential school children was 55.24 ± 7.53. PFI (Mean ± SD) in residential was 54.96 ± 8.38 and in non-residential school children was 44.75 ± 5.05. So, VO2 max (p=0.000) and PFI (p=0.000) were significantly higher in residential as compared to that of non-residential school children. So, from above data analysis it is observed that regular exercise and nutritious food increase the cardiopulmonary fitness values in residential school children.