Book excerpt: Pediatric Exercise Medicine: From Physiologic Principles to Healthcare Application draws from the most current research activity in the area to examine physical activity as a prerequisite to the good health and physical performance of children. The book also considers the effects of lack of exercise on children and the relevance of exercise to clinical pediatrics for children with chronic diseases. While Pediatric Exercise Medicine: From Physiologic Principles to Healthcare Application emphasizes clinically related issues, it provides comprehensive coverage of the child-exercise-health triad of importance to all professionals serving young people. The text identifies current research in the area of pediatric exercise. It also helps the reader to compare the exercise responses of healthy children to the responses of children with clinical impairments. In turn, readers will recognize the factors that can influence children's activity behavior, trainability, and performance. The book contains three chapters related to the normal physiological and perceptual exercise responses of the healthy child. The next nine chapters consider the effects of exercise on children with clinical impairments, including asthma, diabetes, cerebral palsy, and obesity. A special feature is the coverage of children's trainability and the factors that can influence performance. The information, including environmental stressors on children, will be of interest to scholars and students as well as to coaches working in this area. The book also has these features: -Extensive graphic interpretation of the data--more than 250 illustrations -Helpful reference tables -Six appendixes on normative data, methods, energy-equivalent tables for different activities, scaling for body size, and a glossary of terms. In Pediatric Exercise Medicine: From Physiologic Principles to Healthcare Application, you'll find content you can apply in your daily work as a therapist, exercise scientist, physician, or other professional. You'll also find evidence-based rationale for the need for physical activity as a preventive measure and treatment of disease in children.