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ACTIVITY FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS

Activity

FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS

BY BEN SCHOONOVER

Have you ever spent the day outside, and at the end of it thought to yourself “I feel pretty good”? Or maybe spend a long day fishing or hunting, coming home and being able to sit down relaxed and content? Lastly, have you ever been stuck at home, as many of us have during the pandemic, sedentary, and by the end of the day maybe have a more “depressing” outlook on life or how you feel? If so, that’s ok! And it’s not a coincidence.

These feelings that come with associated movement and activity or lack thereof may seem like common sense to a Native, but we now know that there are physical and psychological benefits to increased activity.

For physical health, active and cooperative movement is important for developing fundamental motor skills (FMS) in school age children (5-7 years) as well as for promoting general health and fitness1. What is important to note, is that active play alone does not achieve this, but active cooperative games such as 4-way soccer, hot potato1 or even stickball do.

In an analysis done on people who are sedentary, and those that had a more active lifestyle, it was found that those with the more active life style had positive health benefits while those with a sedentary life had a higher mortality risk. When people allotted less time to sedentary behavior, the reduced their mortality risk2 .

Active people get other health benefits too. I recent study analyzed the effects of high-intensity, sprint, and moderate-intensity continuous exercise on health. While the risk profile of the individual is the main factor in what determines outcome and effectiveness of these different types of activity, the research found definitively across the board that high intensity exercise had the biggest improvement in cardiovascular health and cardiorespiratory fitness3. Moderateintensity exercise, on the other hand, had the biggest improvement of long term glucose metabolism3 which would help prevent type 2 diabetes, as well as help regulate blood sugar in those with type 2 diabetes or those in a pre-diabetic state.

For example, high intensity exercise could be something such

as about a 20 to 40 minute sprint workout on the track, a game of football for about the same length with a bunch of “short bursts” of energy with little time in between, or perhaps even stickball. Moderate-intensity exercise is a long jog or walk for about an hour, or even playing soccer.

So what about mental health? Unfortunately the effects of physical activity and positive mental health have not been greatly studied, even if it may seem like common sense that getting “out and about” makes one happier. So let’s look at some facts.

We know that poor mental health significantly contributes to global morbidity4 or disease. A scoping review published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health examined the relationship between running and mental health. While in some case exercise addiction occurred, overall running had positive mental health benefits4 .

Exercise also releases beta-endorphins, or the “feel-good” chemicals in the brain. A study done on rats that analyzed both aerobic and anaerobic exercise performed over a six week period could lead to increased beta-endorphins in brain tissue5. Increased circulating beta-endorphins would be associated with elevated mood levels.

However we have to ask ourselves, if exercise is so good and even makes us feel good, why do we avoid it? “Exercise is key to good health,” states Dr. Wendy K. Coin, M.D. Asheville Family Health Practice near Cherokee, North Carolina. “But I see many patients give up, and the first sign is stopping movement.” When asked if this creates a continuous cycle, she went on to state that “it makes it harder and harder to move. Patients start thinking they feel worse if they move. So they get in a comfortable position in the recliner, or bed, or couch and move less and less”. Dr. Coin practices what she teaches: at 57 she is a senior Olympian and gold medalist in North Carolina where she leads a very active lifestyle.

So what does all this mean for a Native person? Well it means doing more of what makes us who we are: fishing, hunting, playing our sports, running, even practicing our craftsmanship and making our own things leads to a happier healthier life. Simply doing activities with others, especially if there is laughter involved, increases our personal connections and lifts our mood6. In order to accomplish this, we need more people setting the example, people of all ages giving more encouragement for us to utilize our rich cultures. We need opportunities for our youth to be involved with the community, through both traditional activities and other more modern sports such as soccer or football. We need role models, people our youth can look up to, because sometimes that’s all it takes to make an impression on a young mind, someone you can look at who is just like you, for a young person to say, "I can do that too."

Ben Schoonover (Cherokee) is an NCAI Youth Commission Officer and a junior at the University of Oregon where he is earning a B.S. in Human Physiology.

1Asal Moghaddaszadeh, Angelo N. Belcastro, “Guided Active Play Promotes Physical Activity and Improves Fundamental Motor Skills for School-Aged Children,” Journal of Sport Science and Medicine 20 (2021): 86-93, https://doi.org/10.52082/jssm.2021.86 2 Ian Janssen, et al., “A systematic review of compositional data analysis studies examining associations between sleep, sedentary behaviour, and physical activity with health outcomes in adults,” Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 45, no. 10 (2020):S249-S257, doi:10.1139/apnm-2020-0160 3Felipe Maturana, et al., “Effectiveness of HIIE versus MICT in Improving Cardiometabolic Risk Factors in Health and Disease,” Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise, 53, no. 3 (2021): 559-573, doi:10.1249/mss.0000000000002506 4 Freya Oswald, et al., “A scoping review of the relationship between running and mental health,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17, no. 21 (2020): 8059, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17218059 5 Rostika Flora, Mohammad Zulkarnain, Sukirno. “β-endorphin response to aerobic and anaerobic exercises in wistar male rats.” Medical Journal of Indonesia, 29, no. 3 (2020): 2545-249, https://doi.org/10.13181/mji.oa.203569 6 Manninen S, Tuominen L, Dunbar RI, et al. “Social laughter triggers endogenous opioid release in humans,” Journal of Neuroscience, 37, no. 25 (2017): 6125-6131, https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0688-16.2017

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