It’s a question that bedevils virtually every parent with a kid who plays sports: Is there anything you can do to keep your young athlete on the field and off the disabled list?

It turns out the answer is yes. Tony Breitbach, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of athletic training education at Saint Louis University’s Doisy College of Health Sciences, says there are five things every parent can do to help their kids stay healthy and injury-free while playing sports this summer.

“These are important, common-sense steps that many parents overlook or aren’t aware of,” Breitbach says. “But as summer approaches, it’s more important than ever that parents be aware of the steps they can take to make the coming sports season fun, healthy and injury-free for their kids.”

Following are Breitbach’s five tips for helping young athletes avoid injury:

1: Make sure equipment fits properly. Kids generally grow fast, which means the gear that fit perfectly last year may be too small now.

“Ill-fitting shoes can be an especially big problem,” says Breitbach. “Last summer’s baseball cleats will likely not be right for this summer.” Protective equipment, in particular, must fit properly and be appropriate for the sport, he adds. “If it doesn’t fit, it won’t protect.”

2: Watch their diet. To stay healthy while playing sports, kids need to eat a proper and balanced diet low in fat, with moderate amounts of lean protein and high in complex carbohydrates. Athletes need lots of the latter what Breitbach calls “high-energy foods” right before and after a game or workout.

For athletes, Breitbach says, a key part of a proper diet is staying well-hydrated during and after a big game. “People place way too much emphasis on energy and sports drinks, when good cool water will do just fine and it’s even preferable in most cases.”

He urges that you make sure your child has enough water for the particular sport or activity. “Don’t give him a bottle of water for a long game,” Breitbach says. “In that case, a jug would be better.”

3: Keep them well-rested …and not overbooked. The right amount of sleep and rest is critical to simply function day to day. Athletes also need it to help them recover from the stress or exertion of their game or activity. This is particularly true for kids who play multiple sports sometimes in the same day, Breitbach says.

“Parents need to be really careful about overscheduling their kids,” he says. “They need as much time as possible between games so their bodies can rest and recover.”

4: Help them stay physically fit. In general, Breitbach says, the more fit someone is, the less likely they are to be injured playing sports. The best way to keep your kid in shape is to never let him or her get out of shape. Make sure they’re active all year-round, and don’t rely on sports to keep your kid fit.

Furthermore, Breitbach cautions, don’t sign your child up for a sport just so he or she can lose weight.

“They need to love the sport,” he says. “The truth is, lots of sports aren’t conducive to weight loss anyway in baseball, for instance, there’s a lot of standing around. If your kid needs to lose weight, put him on a healthy diet and join a fitness center where there are personalized fitness programs.”

5: Take care of injuries right away. Listen to your kid’s body, Breitbach says. Take scrapes, pains and aches seriously and if your child is hurt, make sure the injury gets immediate medical attention.

It’s a question that bedevils virtually every parent with a kid who plays sports: Is there anything you can do to keep your young athlete on the field and off the disabled list?

It turns out the answer is yes. Tony Breitbach, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of athletic training education at Saint Louis University’s Doisy College of Health Sciences, says there are five things every parent can do to help their kids stay healthy and injury-free while playing sports this summer.

“These are important, common-sense steps that many parents overlook or aren’t aware of,” Breitbach says. “But as summer approaches, it’s more important than ever that parents be aware of the steps they can take to make the coming sports season fun, healthy and injury-free for their kids.”

Following are Breitbach’s five tips for helping young athletes avoid injury:

1: Make sure equipment fits properly. Kids generally grow fast, which means the gear that fit perfectly last year may be too small now.

“Ill-fitting shoes can be an especially big problem,” says Breitbach. “Last summer’s baseball cleats will likely not be right for this summer.” Protective equipment, in particular, must fit properly and be appropriate for the sport, he adds. “If it doesn’t fit, it won’t protect.”

2: Watch their diet. To stay healthy while playing sports, kids need to eat a proper and balanced diet low in fat, with moderate amounts of lean protein and high in complex carbohydrates. Athletes need lots of the latter what Breitbach calls “high-energy foods” right before and after a game or workout.

For athletes, Breitbach says, a key part of a proper diet is staying well-hydrated during and after a big game. “People place way too much emphasis on energy and sports drinks, when good cool water will do just fine and it’s even preferable in most cases.”

He urges that you make sure your child has enough water for the particular sport or activity. “Don’t give him a bottle of water for a long game,” Breitbach says. “In that case, a jug would be better.”

3: Keep them well-rested …and not overbooked. The right amount of sleep and rest is critical to simply function day to day. Athletes also need it to help them recover from the stress or exertion of their game or activity. This is particularly true for kids who play multiple sports sometimes in the same day, Breitbach says.

“Parents need to be really careful about overscheduling their kids,” he says. “They need as much time as possible between games so their bodies can rest and recover.”

4: Help them stay physically fit. In general, Breitbach says, the more fit someone is, the less likely they are to be injured playing sports. The best way to keep your kid in shape is to never let him or her get out of shape. Make sure they’re active all year-round, and don’t rely on sports to keep your kid fit.

Furthermore, Breitbach cautions, don’t sign your child up for a sport just so he or she can lose weight.

“They need to love the sport,” he says. “The truth is, lots of sports aren’t conducive to weight loss anyway in baseball, for instance, there’s a lot of standing around. If your kid needs to lose weight, put him on a healthy diet and join a fitness center where there are personalized fitness programs.”

5: Take care of injuries right away. Listen to your kid’s body, Breitbach says. Take scrapes, pains and aches seriously and if your child is hurt, make sure the injury gets immediate medical attention.

Health and Safety Commission (HSC) Chair, Judith Hackitt, spent the day with a group of 10 and 11 year-olds from Staple Hill Primary School, Page Road, Bristol, at the Lifeskills – Learning for Living training centre (which is based at The Create Centre, Smeaton Road, Bristol). The HSC Chair was in Bristol to see how the youngsters were taught valuable lessons in ’sensible risk’ management and to reiterate her message to combat the growing perception of a ‘cotton-wool’ culture in today’s society.

The Lifeskills centre is a permanent regional interactive safety education and training facility which has been modelled on a ‘realistic’ village. The village has a number of potential hazards including a road, an electricity substation, a building site and a farm.

Commenting on her visit, Judith Hackitt said:

“The Lifeskills centre is an ideal environment for children learn about risks through educational activities and play. What I have seen today are fantastic opportunities that can help children learn important life skills, including handling the type of risks they are faced with themselves. Life can never be risk free, we know that. We can’t eliminate risk altogether and we want people – and especially children – to continue to enjoy important recreational and learning activities. Children should learn to identify hazards and handle risks. Growing up in cotton wool runs the risk of a generation who are completely unaware of the risks around them, leaving themselves and others very much exposed.”

HSE launched its sensible risk campaign to encourage a simple and practical approach to risk assessment, encouraging people to enjoy daily and leisure activities, managing risk responsibly.

More information can be found here.

Steven Small, professor of neurology and psychology at the University of Chicago, and colleagues Ana Solodkin and John Milton, are among a group science writers and neuroscientists featured in Your Brain On Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans, a new book that explores how the brain functions when people participate in sports as athletes, coaches and fans.

Using baseball as the quintessential sport for all three perspectives, the contributors tackle such questions as: How does a player hit a 90-mile-per-hour fastball when he barely has time to visually register it? Why do fans remain devotedly loyal year after year? And what allows them to believe in superstitions, such as a curse?

Other topics investigated in the book include how a ballplayer’s brain changes as he gains experience and expertise, why there are a higher percentage of left-handers in the major leagues compared to the general population, and the ethical implications of neurological performance enhancement.

Small’s contribution, “Why Did Casey Strike Out: The Neuroscience of Hitting,? focuses on the batter-pitcher match-up from the point of view of the neural networks that control if, when and how the batter swings the bat.

“If the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand at 100 miles per hour,” Small said, “it will take it 0.367 seconds to reach home plate–less than the time between successive heart beats. For elite batters, such as the Cubs’ Alfonso Soriano, such extraordinary skill can only be accomplished by figuring out what the pitcher will do before he even releases the ball.”

Small, an expert on the brain imaging of human behavior, uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study how the brain of professional athletes plans complex movements, such as swinging a baseball bat. With fMRI, researchers can peer into the brain while an athlete focuses on a video of a real situation, such as a pitcher preparing (e.g., winding up, gripping the ball and then releasing the pitch. The scanner can identify the various parts of the brain that activate as the batter prepares his swing.

In several related studies, Small has found patterns that are common as people learn a new task and then slowly master that skill through practice. Based on this research, it would be expected for a novice baseball player to have more brain activation when preparing to swing a bat than an expert. Experts require less brain power because their brains become more efficient at that task as they gain proficiency.

Professional athletes, he found, activate only the regions of the brain that are critical to a precise activity, such as swinging the bat. The novice, on the other hand, has to activate several other regions, some tangentially connected to the movement and others linked to the neural foundation of emotion.

“When doing something for the first time,” Small said, “there is a lower ability to concentrate and greater involvement of emotion than after gaining expertise. Adding these factors to the brain’s neural programming, makes it more complex and therefore less efficient.”

Although emotions such as fear and anxiety are profoundly familiar to Cubs fans, the pervasive role of the brain in playing and watching baseball may be less apparent. Yet the “very existence of such a thing as sports fandom grows out of the way the brain works,” notes Dan Gordon, editor of Your Brain on Cubs.

Gordon asked Small and colleagues to write about their brain research “because it had applications to baseball,” he explained. “As a life-long Cubs fans, I also wanted to include a contributor from Chicago, although the University of Chicago is located in White Sox territory.”

Only 45 percent of baseball players were able to return to the game at the same or higher level after shoulder or elbow surgery, according to new research released during the 2008 American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Specialty Day at The Moscone Center.

“In an ideal world, of course, we would get 100 percent of the players back to their pre-injury level or higher,” says Steven B. Cohen, MD, assistant team physician for the Philadelphia Phillies and director of Sports Medicine Research at the Rothman Institute in Philadelphia. “But the fact of the matter is at this elite level of the sport, the physical demands of throwing have much higher requirements than the regular person on the street. The average person who has shoulder or elbow surgery can return to their regular activities. Throwing a baseball at the professional level puts a significant amount of stress on the shoulder and the elbow.”

Over a four-season period, Cohen and colleagues studied 44 players from one professional baseball club (major league, AAA, AA and A) who underwent 50 shoulder and elbow operations by a variety of surgeons. There were 27 shoulder surgeries performed on 26 players and 23 elbow surgeries performed on 21 players. A key finding of the study was that players returning after elbow surgery were more likely to comeback to the same or higher playing level than those who had shoulder surgery. Thirty-five of the players were pitchers with 43 percent returning to the same or higher playing level.

The researchers found that overall, only 20 of the 44 players (45 percent) returned to the same or higher level of professional baseball. For ballplayers at the major league, AAA, or AA level, the study found only 4 of 22 (18 percent) were able to return to the same or higher level.

“As a surgeon, obviously these statistics were disappointing and somewhat lower than what we would like them to be,” said Cohen. “This may give us cause, however, to look at how we evaluate and treat these injuries to the throwing arm. Our goal is to get these elite athletes back to their premier pre-injury health. This is important both to the player who is making a living off his athletic ability and the organization that wants its players in top shape. We may need to examine if there is a way to ‘fine-tune’ these procedures to customize them for the demands of a professional baseball player.”

Throughout the world, amateurs, experts and the media agree that prolonged jogging raises people’s spirits. And many believe that the body’s own opioids, so called endorphins, are the cause of this. But in fact this has never been proved until now. Researchers at the Technische Universität München and the University of Bonn succeeded to demonstrate the existence of an ‘endorphin driven runner’s high’. In an imaging study they were able to show, for the first time, increased release of endorphins in certain areas of the athletes’ brains during a two-hour jogging session. Their results are also relevant for patients suffering from chronic pain, because the body’s own opiates are produced in areas of the brain which are involved in the suppression of pain. The researchers, some of whom are also members of the German Research Network of Neuropathic Pain (Deutscher Forschungsverbund Neuropathischer Schmerz, DFNS), which is also funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF), thereby show that jogging not only makes you high, but can also relieve pain. The results of the study have now been published in the scientific journal Cerebral Cortex.

Runner’s high

Endurance sports have long been seen as reducing stress, relieving anxiety, enhancing mood and decreasing the perception of pain. The high that accompanies jogging even led to the creation of its own term, ‘runner’s high’. Yet the cause of these positive effects on the senses was not clear until now. The most popular theory was and still is the ‘Endorphin Hypothesis’, which claimed that there was increased production of the body’s own opioids in the brain. However, since until now direct proof of this theory could not be provided; for technical reasons, it was a constant source of controversial discussions in scientific circles. The result was that the myth of ‘runner’s high through endorphins’ lived on.

Scientists confirm the endorphin hypothesis for the first time

Scientists from the fields of Nuclear Medicine, Neurology and Anaesthesia at the Technische Universität München (TUM) and the University of Bonn have now subjected the endorphin theory to closer scrutiny. Ten athletes were scanned before and after a two-hour long-distance run using an imaging technique called positron emission tomography (PET). For this they used the radioactive substance [18F]diprenorphine ([18F]FDPN), which binds to the opiate receptors in the brain and hence competes with endorphins. ‘The more endorphins are produced in the athlete’s brain, the more opiate receptors are blocked,’ says Professor Henning Boecker, who coordinated the research at TUM and who is now in charge of the ‘Functional Neuroimaging Group’ at the Dept. of Radiology, University Hospital Bonn. And further: ‘Respectively the opioid receptor binding of the [18F]FDPN decreases, since there is a direct competition between endorphins in the brain and the injected ligand’. By comparing the images before and after two hours of long distance running the study could demonstrate a significantly decreased binding of the [18F]FDPN-ligand. This is a strong argument in favour of an increased production of the body’s own opioids while doing long-distance running. ‘We could validate for the first time an endorphin driven runner’s high and identify the affected brain areas’, states Boecker. ‘It’s interesting to see that the affected brain areas were preferentially located in prefrontal and limbic brain regions which are known to play a key role in emotional processing. Moreover, we observed a significant increase of the euphoria and happiness ratings compared to the ratings before the running exercise.’ Professor Thomas Tölle, who for several years has been head of a research group called ‘Functional Imaging of Pain’ at TU Munich, adds: ‘Our evaluations show that the more intensively the high is experienced, the lower the binding of [18F]FDPN was in the PET scan. And this means that the ratings of euphoria and happiness correlated directly with the release of the endorphins.’ In addition, as a spokesman of the ‘German Association of Neuropathic Pain’, he feels happy for patients suffering from chronic pain. ‘The fact that the endorphins are also released in areas of the brain that are at the centre of the suppression of pain was not quite unexpected, but even this proof was missing. Now we hope that these images will also impress our pain patients and will motivate them to take up sports training within their available limits.’

Running down the pain?

It is well known that endorphins facilitate the body’s own pain suppression by influencing the way the body passes on pain and processes it in the nervous system and brain. The increased production of endorphins resulting from long-distance running could also serve as the body’s own pain-killer, a therapeutic option which is not only of interest to the German Association of Neuropathic Pain. ‘Now we are very curious about the results of an imaging study using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging which we are currently carrying out in Bonn in order to investigate the influence of long-distance running on the processing of pain directly,’ Professor Boecker says. Further research is required so as to investigate the exact effects on depression and states of anxiety but also on possible aspects which may promote addiction. That is why the relation between genetic disposition and opiate receptor distribution in the brain is being currently investigated at TU Munich. ‘A scary thought,’ Thomas Tölle comments, ‘if we ran because our genes wanted us to do so.’ The first step towards researching these connections has now been made.

Throughout the world, amateurs, experts and the media agree that prolonged jogging raises people’s spirits. And many believe that the body’s own opioids, so called endorphins, are the cause of this. But in fact this has never been proved until now. Researchers at the Technische Universität München and the University of Bonn succeeded to demonstrate the existence of an ‘endorphin driven runner’s high’. In an imaging study they were able to show, for the first time, increased release of endorphins in certain areas of the athletes’ brains during a two-hour jogging session. Their results are also relevant for patients suffering from chronic pain, because the body’s own opiates are produced in areas of the brain which are involved in the suppression of pain. The researchers, some of whom are also members of the German Research Network of Neuropathic Pain (Deutscher Forschungsverbund Neuropathischer Schmerz, DFNS), which is also funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF), thereby show that jogging not only makes you high, but can also relieve pain. The results of the study have now been published in the scientific journal Cerebral Cortex.

Runner’s high

Endurance sports have long been seen as reducing stress, relieving anxiety, enhancing mood and decreasing the perception of pain. The high that accompanies jogging even led to the creation of its own term, ‘runner’s high’. Yet the cause of these positive effects on the senses was not clear until now. The most popular theory was and still is the ‘Endorphin Hypothesis’, which claimed that there was increased production of the body’s own opioids in the brain. However, since until now direct proof of this theory could not be provided; for technical reasons, it was a constant source of controversial discussions in scientific circles. The result was that the myth of ‘runner’s high through endorphins’ lived on.

Scientists confirm the endorphin hypothesis for the first time

Scientists from the fields of Nuclear Medicine, Neurology and Anaesthesia at the Technische Universität München (TUM) and the University of Bonn have now subjected the endorphin theory to closer scrutiny. Ten athletes were scanned before and after a two-hour long-distance run using an imaging technique called positron emission tomography (PET). For this they used the radioactive substance [18F]diprenorphine ([18F]FDPN), which binds to the opiate receptors in the brain and hence competes with endorphins. ‘The more endorphins are produced in the athlete’s brain, the more opiate receptors are blocked,’ says Professor Henning Boecker, who coordinated the research at TUM and who is now in charge of the ‘Functional Neuroimaging Group’ at the Dept. of Radiology, University Hospital Bonn. And further: ‘Respectively the opioid receptor binding of the [18F]FDPN decreases, since there is a direct competition between endorphins in the brain and the injected ligand’. By comparing the images before and after two hours of long distance running the study could demonstrate a significantly decreased binding of the [18F]FDPN-ligand. This is a strong argument in favour of an increased production of the body’s own opioids while doing long-distance running. ‘We could validate for the first time an endorphin driven runner’s high and identify the affected brain areas’, states Boecker. ‘It’s interesting to see that the affected brain areas were preferentially located in prefrontal and limbic brain regions which are known to play a key role in emotional processing. Moreover, we observed a significant increase of the euphoria and happiness ratings compared to the ratings before the running exercise.’ Professor Thomas Tölle, who for several years has been head of a research group called ‘Functional Imaging of Pain’ at TU Munich, adds: ‘Our evaluations show that the more intensively the high is experienced, the lower the binding of [18F]FDPN was in the PET scan. And this means that the ratings of euphoria and happiness correlated directly with the release of the endorphins.’ In addition, as a spokesman of the ‘German Association of Neuropathic Pain’, he feels happy for patients suffering from chronic pain. ‘The fact that the endorphins are also released in areas of the brain that are at the centre of the suppression of pain was not quite unexpected, but even this proof was missing. Now we hope that these images will also impress our pain patients and will motivate them to take up sports training within their available limits.’

Running down the pain?

It is well known that endorphins facilitate the body’s own pain suppression by influencing the way the body passes on pain and processes it in the nervous system and brain. The increased production of endorphins resulting from long-distance running could also serve as the body’s own pain-killer, a therapeutic option which is not only of interest to the German Association of Neuropathic Pain. ‘Now we are very curious about the results of an imaging study using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging which we are currently carrying out in Bonn in order to investigate the influence of long-distance running on the processing of pain directly,’ Professor Boecker says. Further research is required so as to investigate the exact effects on depression and states of anxiety but also on possible aspects which may promote addiction. That is why the relation between genetic disposition and opiate receptor distribution in the brain is being currently investigated at TU Munich. ‘A scary thought,’ Thomas Tölle comments, ‘if we ran because our genes wanted us to do so.’ The first step towards researching these connections has now been made.

A study published in the February issue of Injury Prevention estimates that more than 98,000 sports injuries in U.S. high schools in 2005-2007 were directly related to an action that was ruled illegal activity by a referee, official or disciplinary committee.

Researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy (CIRP) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital analyzed data from the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 National High School Sport-Related Injury Surveillance Study. Nine high school sports were included: boys’ football, soccer, basketball, wrestling and baseball and girls’ soccer, volleyball, basketball and softball.

Boys’ and girls’ soccer had the highest rates of injuries related to illegal activity and girls’ volleyball, girls’ softball and boys’ baseball had the lowest. Overall, 6.4 percent of all high school sports-related injuries were related to illegal activity, with the highest proportion in girls’ basketball (14 percent), girls’ soccer (nearly 12 percent) and boys’ soccer (11 percent).

Thirty-two percent of injuries related to illegal activity were to the head and/or face and 25 percent were concussions.

“Our research indicates illegal activity is an overlooked risk factor for sports-related injury,” said Study Co-Author Christy Collins of CIRP. “Reducing illegal activity through enhanced enforcement of rules and targeted education about the dangers of illegal activity may reduce sports-related injuries.”

Of the nine sports studied, more than 10 percent of injuries in four sports were related to illegal activity. By definition, activities ruled illegal are not supposed to occur. Thus, injuries attributed to illegal activities should be largely preventable.

“Each sport has a unique set of rules developed to promote fair competition and protect participants from injury,” added Study Co-Author Dawn Comstock, Ph.D., of CIRP and a faculty member of The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

“Thus, enforcing rules and punishing illegal activity is a risk control measure that may reduce injury rates by modifying players’ behavior.”

The study was funded in part by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Columbus, OH
United States
http://www.nationwidechildrens.org Medical News Today News Article

Zargis Medical Corp., a spin-off from Siemens Corporate Research (NYSE: SI) and a majority-owned subsidiary of Speedus Corp. (Nasdaq: SPDE) announced that Cardioscan(R) is being used at the middle and high schools in Long Branch, New Jersey to evaluate student athletes during preparticipation sports physicals.

The Cardioscan evaluation is being undertaken in conjunction with The Children’s Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, which provides school physicians for the district. The school nurses for the district have been actively administering Cardioscan to athletes and the results are being interpreted by physicians. Following the conclusion of the program, which will involve nearly 800 students over the next 12 months, the Center’s Director of Pediatric Inpatient Services, Dr. Richard DeGroote, and Dr. Rhea Salonga, will interpret the findings and intend to submit the results for publication.

According to Dr. DeGroote, “There is clearly a need for a cost-effective screening method which could be an adjunct to the preparticipation sports physical exam in the early identification of certain potentially lethal cardiovascular abnormalities in young athletes. Although rare, the death of a young athlete from a previously undetected cardiovascular abnormality (an event commonly referred to as Sudden Cardiac Death or “SCD”) is a tragedy that impacts an entire community and receives a great deal of media attention. I am very pleased that the Long Branch school district is the first school in the country to incorporate Cardioscan into student physicals.”

According to Zargis CEO John Kallassy, “Our Cardioscan device could be a cost effective addition to any school system’s sports preparticipation screening program. As a result, we believe that Cardioscan could one day become a standard of care in pre-sports physicals in physicians’ offices or at the more than 26,000 secondary schools in the U.S. as well as in school systems in numerous overseas markets.”

As part of the evaluation protocol, the entire nursing team for the Long Branch district, led by head nurse Kathy Celli, has undergone training in the use of Cardioscan.

About Zargis Medical Corp.

Zargis Medical Corp. develops advanced diagnostic decision support products and services for primary care physicians, pediatricians, cardiologists and other healthcare professionals. Zargis was formed in 2001 when Siemens Corporate Research, a division of Siemens AG (NYSE: SI), and Speedus Corp. co-invested to develop and market an advanced acoustic technology designed to detect heart abnormalities identified through analysis of heart sounds.

A landmark University of Alberta study, analyzing a sample of over 275,000 individuals, has found that when it comes to participation in physical activity, one size does not fit all.

The study, co-authored with U of A professor Jane Ruseski, looked at a wide range of factors, including income, education and ethnicity, that influence whether a person decides to be physically active, as well as their time spent being active. It also examined the impact of government spending on parks and recreation on an individual’s decision to participate in physical activity and sports.

At a 57 per cent participation rate, walking was found to be the most common form of physical activity undertaken for exercise. Results suggest that participation in walking increases with age, indicating that programs aimed at promoting walking for exercise could appeal to older populations, says Humphreys.

It was found that participation in all types of physical activities increased when a person had a higher level of income and that people with a post-secondary education participated in outdoor recreation activities more than high school graduates. As well, females were less likely to participate in outdoor recreation activities, group sports and individual sports than males.

The study appears in Contemporary Economic Policy.