ary 03, 2014; Revised February 08, 2014; Accepted February 12, 2014Copyright © 2013 Science and Education Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
Cite this article:
- Mukherjee, Shankarashis, et al. "Effect of Bharatnatyam Dancing on Body Composion of Bengalee Female Children." American Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 2.1 (2014): 56-59.
- Mukherjee, S. , Banerjee, N. , Chatterjee, S. , Chatterjee, S. , Chatterjee, A. , Santra, T. , & Saha, B. (2014). Effect of Bharatnatyam Dancing on Body Composion of Bengalee Female Children. American Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 2(1), 56-59.
- Mukherjee, Shankarashis, Neepa Banerjee, Surjani Chatterjee, Sandipan Chatterjee, Ayan Chatterjee, Tanaya Santra, and Bijan Saha. "Effect of Bharatnatyam Dancing on Body Composion of Bengalee Female Children." American Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 2, no. 1 (2014): 56-59.
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Overweight, defined as having excess body weight for a particular body height from fat, muscle, bone, water or a combination of these factors , have become a global problem in the last decade . The scale of the obesity problem has a number of serious direct and indirect consequences for individuals and public health systems. The direct economic costs are medical costs for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment services for the obesity problem, while indirect costs relate to loss of income from decreased productivity, restricted activity, absenteeism, and bed days and lead to income loss by premature death. Together with rise in obesity in adults, the proportion of obesity in children have increased from 5% to 18% during 1980 to 2010 . Children and adolescents who are obese are at greater risk for bone and joint problems, sleep apnoea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem ([4, 5, 6]). The greater concern is that the risks of overweight during childhood will persist into adolescence and adulthood . The worldwide epidemic of excess weight is due to imbalance between physical activity and dietary energy intake, ective of the age of individuals. Sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diet, and consequent overweight and obesity markedly increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases . Physical activity plays an important role in the preventing one from becoming overweight and obese in childhood, reducing thereby the risk of suffering from obesity in adulthood . Dance, a form of physical activity and a mode of exercise , performed by small groups of all ages , is a sequence of non verbal rhythmic body movements of creative nature and scope for expression. Bharatnatyam, an Indian classical dance, is a recreational activity since age old times.
It is a unique synchronization of music, rhythm and expression, where the dancer expresses the full gamut of human’s experience through aesthetics. It includes some special movements like sitting, bending, standing, twisting etc and some complex movements like jumps and taut hand gestures. Some special types of exercise or initial basic steps, referred to as ‘adavu’, are required to be learnt before performing the dance. In this backdrop, a study was undertaken to see the effect of regular Bharatnatyam dancing on body composition in children.
Initially institutions imparting training on Bharatnatyam dancing were approached and required permission was obtained. The names of initially interested volunteers were enlisted. The inclusion criteria was that the children (12-18 year) should have a minimum training of 5 years in Bharatnatyam and practice it regularly for at least an hour for 6 days in a week. Bharatnatyam dancing training for less than 5 years and being trained in other forms of exercise were considered as exclusion criteria for the study. Children of comparable age and socio-economic background, but not receiving training in any form of dance and also not exercising regularly constituted the Control Group (CG). Information about age (year), period for which individuals are receiving training in Bharatnat