Exercise physiology: health indicators and cardiovascular risk factors during childhood and adolescence

Low risk strategies use favourable levels of different behavioural and physiological parameters, which may be accepted as health indicators. High risk strategies are oriented to protect people from the potential risk levels of the same behavioural and physiological parameters. Both strategies are first applied to adults; but the established levels of risk in adults cannot be explained only by their living conditions, these factors must have some genetic and educational roots in childhood and adolescence. Based on several cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of 1652 subjects it was shown that trained and untrained adolescents did not differ in family history of CHD but clearly had different behavioural risk factors. The early identification of children and adolescents with a high risk of developing CHD should be intensified using integrated risk indicators. Thus collaboration between exercise physiology and preventive cardiology should be centered more on studies of children and adolescents.