Send the kids outside to play

By Richard P. Holm, M.D.

Last night at a lecture about the value of education in Afghanistan, the speaker told us of kids growing up surrounded by war, without being able to play outside safely. He said that kids throughout the rest of the world need to step away from their computers and TVs, and exercise their glorious freedom by going outside to play. The place erupted in applause.

This simple statement is supported by a recent “Move Muscles” or 2M study we did with first- to fifth-grade children. It was a combined effort by staff at the Brookings Boys and Girls Club, researchers from South Dakota State University, South Dakota medical-school students, and the South Dakota Internal Medicine organization, called the American College of Physicians. We found pedometer and activity readings were significantly greater when children were simply allowed to have free-play, as compared to organized activity.

For as long as humans have lived, until now, kids have been encouraged to go outside and play. As a kid growing up in DeSmet, I was outside for all four seasons. I remember jumping into piles of leaves, building snow forts for ferocious snowball fights, floating stick rafts down melting spring snow gutter-rivers, and summer biking everywhere.

But things have changed. Now we drive our kids to school to sit and listen all day to people talking, they watch while a few athletes compete in a game of some kind, and then they come home to play video games of action heroes, while they sit on a couch eating high-caloric snacks. Unless something changes, this generation of kids will grow up to be adults who drive to work while they earn money sitting in an office, and who have labor-saving devices do the work while they continue to sit and watch other people play.

It is easy to understand why there is an epidemic of obesity and diabetes, and why adult joints are so stiff and immobile, and why life expectancy in this country is dropping. Simply put, people will die and are dying young from diseases of inactivity. This problem is only getting worse.

We could do something to change this deadly trend if we would simply send our kids outside to play. And remember, what’s good for kids are good for people of all ages.

Send the kids outside to play

By Richard P. Holm M.D.

Last night at a lecture about the value of education in Afghanistan, the speaker told us of kids growing up surrounded by war, without being able to play outside safely. He said kids throughout the rest of the world need to step away from their computers and TV sets, and exercise their freedom by going outside to play. The place erupted in applause.

This simple statement is supported by a recent “Move Muscles” or 2M study we did with first to fifth grade children. It was a combined effort by staff at the Brookings Boys and Girls club, researchers from SDSU, South Dakota med students, and the SD Internal Medicine organization, the ACP. We found pedometer and activity readings were greater when children were simply encouraged to have free-play, as compared to organized activity, or screen time.

For as long as humans have lived, until now, kids have been encouraged to go outside and play. As a kid growing up in DeSmet, I was outside for all four seasons. I remember jumping into piles of leaves, building snow forts for ferocious snowball fights, floating stick rafts down melting snow gutter-rivers, and biking everywhere.

But things have changed. Now we drive our kids to school to sit and listen all day to people talking, they watch while a few athletes compete in a game of some kind, and then they come home to play video games of action heroes, while they sit on a couch eating high caloric snacks. Unless something changes, this generation of kids will grow up to be adults who drive to work while they earn money sitting in an office, and who have labor-saving devices do the work while they continue to sit and watch other people play.

It is easy to understand why there is an epidemic of obesity and diabetes; why adult joints are so stiff and immobile; and why life expectancy in this country is dropping. Simply put, people will die and are dying young from diseases of inactivity and this problem is only getting worse.

We could do something to change this deadly trend if we would simply send our kids outside to play.

Mental health and mortality

By Richard P. Holm, M.D.

Mental and emotional problems are everywhere. More than half of what I do, as a general internist, is to help people deal with emotional problems. It comes with the heartbreak and suffering of loss, pain, or growing old, with debilitating illnesses, and with the burden of mental illness itself. It is truly a challenge to try to help people cope with such trouble.

This September a large, 13-year Canadian study reported a 322-percent higher death rate in people taking minor tranquillizers compared with those not taking such medicines. Use of this type of drug can be taken as an indicator of emotional problems. Looking closer, there were huge socio-demographic and lifestyle differences between groups.

The study implied that if one comes from a tough neighborhood, drops out of school, struggles with addiction, abuses alcohol, smokes, does not exercise, and has mental health problems, then the risk of premature death is more than three times higher than one without such problems. In other words, emotional illness often walks side-by-side with tough social, economic, and health problems. And the combination is associated with premature death.

There was also an inference from the study that the use of minor tranquilizer-type sleeping medicine might alone carry some risk to one’s physical health. My personal interpretation from the data is that sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medicines can cover up or make worse an underlying depression. What’s more, these tranquilizers often put off or prevent appropriate therapy, such as counseling, exercise programs, and very effective antidepressant medicines.

Mental health is truly an important ideal but it comes and goes for each of us as we struggle and meander through our lives. Physicians and care providers have tools to help, including ears to listen, words of advice, and sometimes even good medicine to prescribe. To ignore indicators that there might be a mental health problem could mean the difference between life and death.



Dr. Rick Holm wrote this editorial for “On Call®,” a weekly program about health on South Dakota Public Broadcasting-Television that is produced by the South Dakota Cooperative Extension Service. “On Call” airs Thursdays on South Dakota Public Broadcasting-Television at 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain.