Want to raise healthy and smart children? Then don't allow them to be couch potatoes. Exercise, it turns out, does more than benefit the body and overall health -- physical fitness builds smarter brains in youngsters, too.

That's the news from a study just published in the journal Brain Research. Scientists used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the relative size of specific structures in the brains of 49 children, all of whom were 9 or 10 years old. The research team discovered that the hippocampus (part of the brain inside the temporal lobe that plays an important part in memory and learning) tended to be significantly larger in the kids who were physically fit. What's more, the fit children performed better on a memory test than youngsters the same age who were out of shape.

Read the article on NaturalNews.com

Kids who spend more time outside — and away from the television set — are less likely to develop myopia, the inability to see things clearly at a distance.

The new report, from researchers in Boston, doesn’t determine whether too much indoor activity actually causes poor eyesight. And even if it does, researchers haven’t pinpointed what the exact mechanism might be.

Read the original article on eHealthandWellness.

A review released today, which analyzed 173 strong research papers and nearly three decades of research, finds that 80 percent of studies agree that heavy media exposure increases the risk of harm to children, including obesity, smoking, sex, drug and alcohol use, attention problems and poor grades.

Some of the links are very strong. 93 percent of studies found that children with greater media exposure have sex earlier. Authors say the soundest studies are those linking media use with obesity.

The review provides overwhelming evidence of the importance of limiting children's use of media, and teaching them to critically evaluate the ever-growing volume of text, images and sounds with which they are bombarded. Read the original article on Mercola.com blog.