The importance of adolescent health

Adolescent health is the foundation for an individual's lifelong development, and it is also the core reserve of the country's future human capital. Without this premise, academic performance, personal ideals, and all possibilities for social development are empty talk.

Not long ago, I was helping to follow up the physical fitness of teenagers at the community health service center in my jurisdiction. I met a boy in the third grade of junior high school who had just finished the first-middle exam. He was 1.78 meters tall and looked quite strong. He fell down just after crossing the finish line in the 800-meter physical test. When he was sent to the emergency room, it was found that his diastolic blood pressure had soared to 100, which was higher than his father who smoked every day. After asking, I found out that this child had been sleeping less than 6 hours a day for three months in a row in order to focus on the important points. He had three cups of milk tea in the morning, noon and evening, and went to a cram school right after school. His parents even spared the time to go downstairs to throw away the garbage and study the questions.

Regarding the priority of adolescent health, there have always been two completely different voices in academia and education. One type is the "health bottom line", which represents researchers in the field of public health. The core view is that the physical and psychological development of adolescents is irreversible. For example, if myopia exceeds 600 degrees before the age of 14, the risk of subsequent retinal detachment and glaucoma will increase by 8 to 10 times. Insufficient growth hormone secretion caused by long-term sleep deprivation in adolescence will not grow back in adulthood no matter how much calcium is supplemented. Therefore, no matter how much pressure there is to go to school, the bottom line of sleep, exercise, and mental health must be stuck. This is also the core logic of the "sleep order" and "sports bonus point policy" issued by the Ministry of Education in recent years. The other type is the "stage adaptation group", mostly front-line educators and parents in areas with high pressure for further education. Their concerns are also very realistic: there are only so many high-quality educational resources. Your children sleep 10 hours a day to exercise, while other people's children study for 3 hours more. One point difference in the high school entrance examination can make a whole playground difference. Completely ideal health requirements are not grounded at all. It is better to find a dynamic balance within the existing framework. There is no absolute right or wrong between the two views. They are essentially a trade-off of development priorities. However, the consensus between the two is actually very clear: without a healthy bottom line, all trade-offs will be empty in the end.

I also received a psychological counseling case last month. She was a girl who was in the second year of a provincial key high school. She had always been in the top three in her grade. She got second in the last monthly exam. She went home and closed the door and slapped herself. At first, the parents thought, "It is a good thing that the child should be strong." It was not until the child began to show symptoms of being tired of studying and insomnia that he was diagnosed with moderate anxiety and a tendency to depression. Many people's understanding of adolescent health is still "healthy without illness", and they have not realized that emotional and mental health are also hard indicators - I have seen too many children who were admitted to top colleges drop out of college because they could not bear the pressure, or even went to extremes. The scores they had worked hard for more than ten years were wiped out in a second.

The public data from the 2023 National Student Physical Health Survey is here: the myopia rate among primary and secondary school students in my country has reached 53.6%, the myopia rate among high school students exceeds 80%, the overweight and obesity rate among primary and secondary school students has reached 19.0%, 1 in every 5 children has a chubby child, and the depression detection rate among teenagers is close to 15%. These numbers are not cold statistical symbols. They are the physical burden that each child will bear for decades when they grow up. They are also the medical costs that the entire society will bear in the future.

I chatted with a friend who works in youth sports training, and he said that 80% of the parents who sign up for exercise classes now are either to score points for the high school entrance examination, or because their children are so obese that they have fatty liver or high blood sugar and are forced by doctors. Only less than 20% of parents really regard exercise as a necessity for their children's daily health, as important as eating and sleeping. To put it bluntly, everyone still does not put "health" in the same position as "achievement". They always feel that sacrificing some health now for academic performance, and then just make up for it when they grow up. How can it be such a good thing?

However, we can see a lot of changes in the past two years. The middle school downstairs from my home locked the classroom for 10 minutes in the first two years, but now it has relaxed it. The playground is open to students free of charge after school. I can often see children in school uniforms playing ball on the playground. The sweaty look is much better than sitting in the classroom studying questions. There are also many places where physical education points are mentioned as having the same value as Chinese, Mathematics and English. Although some people criticize it as "increasing the burden on students", it at least forces parents to start putting their children's exercise time on the agenda. It is better than not paying attention at all.

In fact, after all is said and done, there is no need to explain the importance of adolescent health. When you raise a flower, you know that it needs to be exposed to the sun and watered. You can't fatten it every day just to make it bloom sooner, right? The same is true for children. Sleeping 20 minutes more every day, drinking one less sweet drink, and running downstairs for half an hour after school are more effective than brain supplements or class improvement. After all, there is still a long way to go, my body is broken, no matter how good the university is, no matter how great my ideals are, there is nowhere to put them to use.