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Moderate physical exercise increases cardiac autonomic nervous system activity in children with low heart rate variability

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Abstract

Object

Our objective was to investigate the effect of a long-term moderate exercise program on cardiac autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity in healthy children.

Methods

Three hundred and five children aged 6–11 years participated in a 12-month school-based exercise training program (130–140 bpm, 20 min/day, 5 days/week). Cardiac ANS activities were measured using heart rate variability (HRV) power spectral analysis in resting conditions. Following the first measurement, 100 children from the lowest total power (TP) HRV were chosen as experimental samples and the same number of age-, height-, and weight-matched controls (CG) was randomly selected from the remaining children.

Results

In the low group (LG), all the frequency components of the HRV were significantly increased after the training period, whereas only low-frequency power was augmented in the control group (CG).

Conclusion

Our data suggest that the 12-month moderate exercise training has a positive effect on cardiac ANS activity in the children who initially had low HRV.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to express our appreciation of the teachers in the elementary school for their support of this study. Most of all, we are grateful to the children and families who participated. This study was supported in part by a Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture Grant-in -Aid for Scientific Research (B) 11480011.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Applied Physiology, Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan

    Narumi Nagai, Taku Hamada, Tetsuya Kimura & Toshio Moritani

  2. Faculty of Health and Welfare Science, Okayama Prefectural University, Okayama, Japan

    Narumi Nagai

Authors
  1. Narumi Nagai
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  2. Taku Hamada
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  3. Tetsuya Kimura
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  4. Toshio Moritani
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Toshio Moritani.

Additional information

A commentary on this paper is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00381-004-0916-4

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Nagai, N., Hamada, T., Kimura, T. et al. Moderate physical exercise increases cardiac autonomic nervous system activity in children with low heart rate variability. Childs Nerv Syst 20, 209–214 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00381-004-0915-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00381-004-0915-5

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