Rutgers University Athletics

Exercise & Movement

1. Reach Your Potential: Regular physical activity is important for the healthy growth, development, and well-being of children and young people.
2. Reach Your Potential: Children and young people should do at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day to keep healthy.
3. Walk it off: After a big meal, go for a walk. Walking after eating will help in the digestion process.
4. Feel Good, Be Happy: Exercise has been proved to help kids sleep better and reduce stress.
5. Physical activity can improve your overall health by helping you manage your cholesterol, your weight, and lower your cardiovascular risk.

Nutrition

1. Got Nutrients? Milk is a naturally nutrient rich like no other beverage. Just one glass provides nine essential nutrients including calcium, protein and vitamin D.
2. Need Energy? Eat two servings of fruit and five servings of vegetables a day for a greater boost of energy.
3. Need Energy? Eat a variety of foods from the 5 food groups each day - Fruits, vegetables, bread and cereals, meat or meat alternatives and dairy foods. This will give you all the energy, vitamins and minerals your body needs.
4. Power: Help young muscles recover fast by eating a high protein snack within 30 minutes after exercise. Try Low Fat Chocolate Milk.
5. Eating Out: Eating healthy away from home can sometimes be challenging. On sandwiches, trade house dressings for mustard, ketchup, or fresh tomato slices. Substitute a salad for fries.
6. Healthy eating includes eating a variety of foods, such as: vegetables, whole grains, fruits, beans, lean meats, poultry, and fish.
7. Healthy eating can help you improve your health, avoid high and low blood sugar levels, and maintain a healthy weight.
8. Healthy eating can help you control your blood sugar. To help you reach your blood sugar goals, foods can be made in smaller portions with less sugar, less fat, and less salt.

Safety & Injury Prevention

1. Major Savings: While riding a bike remember to wear a helmet! Helmets may reduce the risk for head injury by 85 percent.
2. Stay in the Game: Warm up properly by stretching and running in order to prevent injury.
3. Prepare to Win: While playing sport, remember to maintain proper fitness. Injury rates are higher in athletes who have no adequately prepared physically.
4. Protect your house: In any sport, always wear the right protective gear correctly in order to prevent injuries while playing.
5. Speak Up: Concussions are serious. If you or someone you know may have a concussion, seek treatment immediately and take the right time to recover. It's better to miss one game then the whole season.
6. Heat Exhaustion/Cold: Acclimatize athletes to warm weather over a 14-day period to prevent heat exhaustion. If you are active and playing in the cold, be aware of your body. If you are shivering and chatter go inside and heat up before heading back outside.
7. Stress Hurts: Stress that continues without relief can lead to headaches, an upset stomach, high blood pressure, chest pain, problems with sleeping, depression, panic attacks, or other forms of anxiety and worry.
8. Relax: Learn and practice relaxation techniques. Try breathing exercises, meditation, prayer, yoga, or tai chi.
9. Exercise regularly: You'll feel better and be more prepared to handle problems.
10. Eat healthy: Avoid too much sugar. Focus on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein. When you're stressed, you'll probably want less-nutritious comfort foods, but if you overdo them, they'll add to your problems.
11. Sleep for Success: Get enough rest and sleep. Your body needs time to recover from stressful events.
12. Smile: We do it when we're relaxed and happy, but doing it can also make us feel relaxed and happy.
13. Breath: Breathing deeply and slowly oxygenates your blood, which helps you relax almost instantly.

Sleep & Rest

1. How Much? Kids need 10+ hours of sleep per night. Adults need 7.5-9 hours.
2. Learning and memory: Sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory through a process called memory consolidation. In studies, people who'd slept after learning a task did better on tests later.
3. Safety: Sleep debt contributes to a greater tendency to fall asleep during the daytime. These lapses may cause falls and mistakes such as medical errors, air traffic mishaps, and road accidents.
4. Mood: Sleep loss may result in irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness. Too little sleep can also leave you too tired to do the things you like to do.
5. Grow: Researchers believe too little sleep can affect growth and your immune system which keeps you from getting sick.
6. Cardiovascular health: Serious sleep disorders have been linked to hypertension, increased stress hormone levels, and irregular heartbeat.
7. Eating smart and being active are two important ways to manage diabetes but are often not enough to control blood sugar. Diabetes medicines may be needed to help lower your blood sugar.
8. If you or someone you care for has type 1 diabetes, you are not alone. It’s hard to get an exact number of people with type 1 diabetes, but the JDRF reports that as many as 3 million Americans may have type 1 diabetes and that 85% of people living with type 1 diabetes are adults.
9. Checking your blood sugar regularly is one way to take an active role in your diabetes care.

Performance

1. Drink Up: When athletes should hydrate:
   Before Exercise: hydrate with 16-24 ounces of water or a sports drink
   During Exercise: have unlimited access to water during exercise/activity
   Create a schedule or have scheduled hydration breaks
2. Hot or Cold: Whether its really warm or really cold, make sure you are always hydrating. When you're outside in the cold and breathing hard, you lose a lot of your body's water through you water.
3. Milk!: Reduced fat milk for children over two is a nutritious drink and a great source of calcium to keep them playing and active.
4. Don't let nutrition labels confuse you. The numbers you see on most food labels are based on a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet. Depending on your age, health status, activity level, and if you’re male or female, and your activity level, you may need less or more than 2,000 calories a day.

Understanding Risk

1. Family History: It's important to know your family history. Knowing about any inherited diseases or health trends that run in your family can make a big difference in your own health journey. According to the Mayo Clinic, knowing what your grandparents died of can provide useful-even lifesaving- information about what could be in store for you. Just make sure you share that information with your health care provider!
2. Metabolism and Weight: Chronic sleep deprivation may cause weight gain by affecting the way our bodies process and store carbohydrates, and by altering levels of hormones that affect our appetite.

Other Resources from Our Partners

• RWJBarnabas Health Resource Library
• Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey
• American Dairy Association Nutrition Guide
• Novo Nordisk Diabetes Assessment
• Novo Nordisk Cornerstones4Care