On Monday's 'Déise Today', Damien was speaking to Alison Merrotsy in the department of Sport, Leisure and Childhood Studies in Cork Institute of Technology.
One in seven Irish primary school children have high blood pressure, according to a study. However, a pioneering new school diet and exercise programme has been found to significantly lower blood pressure rates in Irish primary school children.
When the children were initially tested 23% or nearly a quarter of the six-year-olds and 10-year-olds had high-normal blood pressure – which is above average for their age and gender - and 14% had high blood pressure. Alison Merrotsy, from the Department of Sport, Leisure and Childhood Studies in Cork Institute of Technology, said it is the first study of its type in Ireland.
“You wouldn’t expect children to have high blood at all,” said Dr Merrotsy. “It is cause for concern.
“A good percentage of children did have high blood pressure, which is linked to poor diet and poor physical activity levels and high overweight and obesity levels.
Does a more radical thinking need to be done at primary school level in order to curb this?
If you want to listen to the full interview, you can just listen here.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/11231943/14-of-children-have-high-blood-pressure
Also on the show, Maria McCann was talking to Joanna Fortune, who is a clinical psychotherapist.
Joanna was on the show to discuss the recent decision by the World Health Organization (W.H.O) to recognise video game addiction as a ‘disease’.
The organisation state that in order to be classed as addicted to video games that “For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.”
Joanna was also on the show to discuss what happened when the makers of the highly popular game ‘Candy Crush’, developer “King” appeared before British MPS at a digital, culture, media and sports committee last week.
King say that they don’t believe that their games could be addicted but also told the committee that they were not psychiatrists.
If you want to listen to that interivew, you can just click here.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/11231943/can-people-get-addicted-to-video-games
If you want to listen to the full version of Monday's show, you can just click here.
