Iron, vitamins could affect physical fitness in adolescents

Posted by admin

August 11, 2012

Adolescence is an important time not only for growing but for acquiring healthy habits that will last a lifetime, such as choosing foods rich in vitamins and minerals, and adopting a regular exercise regimen. Unfortunately, several studies have shown that adolescents’ intake of important nutrients, as well as their performance on standard physical fitness tests, has fallen in recent years. Because nutrition and fitness are intertwined—for example, iron forms part of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen to muscles, and antioxidants such as vitamin C aid in rebuilding damage after intense training—these two findings could be related. In a new study, researchers have found that adolescents’ blood levels of various micronutrients are correlated with how well they performed in certain physical fitness tests. Though these results don’t prove causality, they suggest a new relationship between different measures of adolescent health.

The article is entitled “Iron and Vitamin Status Biomarkers and its Association with Physical Fitness in Adolescents. The HELENA Study.” and is online at http://bit.ly/Q2j6lJ. It appears in the online edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology, a publication of the American Physiological Society.

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