Interoception and Physical Activity in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Background Undoubtedly, physical fitness is of great importance to the children’s’ health status. Moreover, processing of bodily signals that lead to body perception plays an important role for adults in the general development of self-regulation. On the other hand, there are no relevant data available for children and adolescents. Methods and Results Aim of this study was to investigate whether there are differences among children regarding interoceptive sensitivity in different levels of physical activity. Therefore, within the framework of the health promotion program: “Join the healthy boat †of the university hospital of Ulm and the Baden Württemberg Foundation gGmbH, a study has been conducted with a sample consisted of third and fourth grade pupils. The results revealed a positive significant relationship between physical fitness and interoceptive sensitivity. On the contrary no correlation was confirmed related to the BMI. Those findings resulted from long-term measurements (in three days period of time), using the Actiheart. In this measur