A growing body of research is serving to underline the importance of an active childhood in safeguarding against ill-health later in life.

With national activity levels plummeting and the NHS under severe strain as a result, the need to engage Britain’s in youngsters in physical activity from an early age is now more pressing than ever.

If left unchecked, the UK’s inactivity epidemic will cost the economy an estimated £50bn a year by 2050, according to Public Health England statistics.

Yesterday’s Start Young, Stay Active report, launched by ukactive in collaboration with Judy Murray – mother of Olympic and Wimbledon champion Andy – called on the government, schools and everyone involved in childhood development to play a greater role in improving children’s physical literacy.

It recommended the provision of home fitness kits, such as those developed by Murray’s Set4Sport initiative, to ensure exercise can be taken in any environment.

The report came after several recently released studies also espoused the benefits of activity from an early age in safeguarding against illness in later life.

At Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, researchers have found that teenagers with poor fitness and cognitive performance levels are seven times more likely to develop early-onset dementia.

The research – published last month in the health journal Brain – tracked the health of 1.1 million 18-year-old men who were conscripted into the Swedish army between 1968 and 2005. It found that men with poorer cardiovascular fitness and/or lower IQ in their teenage years more often developed early-onset dementia.

More specifically, men with lowest levels of cardiovascular fitness at the time of conscription were 2.5 times more likely to develop dementia before the age of 60 than those with highest fitness levels.

Also last month, a team of scientists from Australia and the US published research that found exercising while young increases the size and strength of not only muscles, but also bones, providing lifelong health benefits.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their paper outlines how the team studied bones in the arms of baseball players and how activities throughout their lives impacted on bone size and strength.

The study found that after retirement, even the players who carried out no physical activity retained greater bone strength in their throwing arm compared to their other, while those who stayed active maintained 50 per cent of their added bone strength into old age.

Meanwhile, a US study published this week in Neurology found doing aerobic exercise in your 20s may protect the brain in middle age, leading to better thinking skills and memory 20 years after the exercise.

Commenting on the report released yesterday, ukactive CEO David Stalker said: It’s simple, a child who is habitually active from a young age is more likely to be more confident, achieve academically and grow into a happy adult, free from chronic diseases, which have a detrimental impact on their personal health and on the nation’s spiralling NHS costs.”