Abstract
The purpose of the study was to estimate the prevalence of insufficient physical activity and associated factors in adolescents 10 to 19 years old living in the Health Districts of Restinga and Extremo Sul of Porto Alegre, RS. A population-based, cross-sectional study was conducted by a systematic sampling with 967 adolescents randomly selected. Data was collected by using a questionnaire with the following variables: gender, age, skin color, if currently studying, occupation, socioeconomic status, weight and height, as well as insufficient physical activity, which was defined as less than 300 minutes per week of physical activity, not counting physical education classes. The prevalence of insufficient physical activity found was 70.5%: 58.9% in boys and 81.9% in girls. The higher prevalence of insufficient levels of PA was found among adolescents who are not studying (p=0.01) and next by those who are between 16 and 19 years old (p=0.05). In boys it was observed that as they got older, physical activity decreased (p=0.05). The most types of activities found were field soccer and riding bikes for boys, and walking and field soccer for girls. In conclusion, the prevalence of insufficient physical activity found in the adolescents evaluated was high. Being a girl, not studying, and between the ages of 16 and 19, were factors that increased the levels of insufficient physical activity. This reveals, therefore, the importance to developed interventions to promote the practice of physical activity in this population.
Highlights
The regular practice of physical activity has been identified as an important indicator of a population’s health, as well as presenting an inverse relation with chronic-degenerative diseases and morbimortality
The highest prevalence of insufficient physical activity was found in adolescents who are not studying, which was 94.6% in girls and 80.7% in boys, and the highest was in the age bracket between 16 and 19 years old: 85.8% in girls and 66.5% in boys
Insufficient physical activity was high in adolescents in the Health Districts of Restinga and Extremo Sul in the city of Porto Alegre, RS with a prevalence of 70.5%
Summary
The regular practice of physical activity has been identified as an important indicator of a population’s health, as well as presenting an inverse relation with chronic-degenerative diseases and morbimortality. As for the positive effects of the practice of physical activity in adolescence for health in adulthood, we known that there is a lower risk of hypertension[3,4,6,7], type 2 diabetes[7], dyslipidemia[6], obesity[7], as well as decreasing the risk of osteoporosis[8]. Acquiring healthy habits such as proper nutrition and regular physical activity is more effective as it is encouraged and consolidated in childhood and adolescence[9,10,11,12,13]. Initiatives in public health often face a difficulty in bringing about changes in behavior patterns when they focus on the adult population because their habits have already been created
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