Exercise: This is essential for healthy life. Participating in extra- curricular activities such as sports helps to keep activity levels high. Some tips to increase physical activities include: Walk or ride a bicycle for short distances. Use stairs instead of elevators in a building.
Do regular exercise for - minutes, - times each week. This can include walking, jogging, swimming or bike riding. Playing games and sports, such as skipping rope, hockey, basketball, volleyball, or football, and doing yoga are also advisable at all ages. Substance use and abuse: Substance use and abuse in adolescence is a public health problem of major significance and concern.
The substances most widely abused by adolescents are tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana and other addictive drugs. The abuse of drugs and alcohol has a harmful effect on the nutrition and health status of adolescents. Nutrition intervention, support, and counselling would play a major role in the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation process. Much of what we have discussed may be more relevant for adolescents in urban and semi-urban areas.
Rural environments would be different. Rural girls and boys are often engaged in agricultural tasks. They may also be helping their parents in enterprises such as poultry-keeping, cattle- rearing and bee-keeping. Boys may be helping in farming.
Girls also help in looking after their younger siblings as well as cooking and cleaning while their parents earn livelihood. Then there are the tasks of collecting fodder for the cattle, firewood and water. In tribal areas many people are dependent on forest products like berries, flowers, leaves, roots. They spend time gathering and processing these products.
Girls and boys doing these tasks will have high activity levels and therefore, their energy needs will be higher. Protein needs are also higher due to the high growth rate at adolescence. The chances of adolescents being malnourished are, therefore, very high in rural areas among the poorer communities. Girls in particular are known to be anaemic (low iron in blood) and require iron rich foods to be healthy.
Adolescents from rich families in rural areas would face many of the same