Tai Chi Softball Improves Inflammatory Factors In Overweight And Obese Female College Students

Abstract

PURPOSE: The theory of "inflammatory response to obesity" is a new theory based on the new understanding of obesity mechanism in recent years, which reveals that obesity is not only accumulation of fat, but also a pathological mechanism of "chronic low-grade inflammatory state". We aimed to observe 8-week intervention of Tai Chi softball on the inflammatory response of overweight and obese female college students. METHODS: Eight overweight and obese volunteers were recruited. The intervention lasted 8 weeks, 4 times a week and 70 minutes each time(15 minutes warm-up, 40 minutes formal exercise, 15 minutes stretching). The average heart rate was monitored during exercise. Body composition and inflammatory factors including NF-κB, IL-6, SOCS-3 and TNF-α were compared before and after testing using an independent samples t-test. RESULTS: The mean heart rate of the subjects during exercise during intervention was 120.76 b/min. It means that the exercise is moderate intensity exercise;The subjects' weight, BMI and body fat percentage all showed a trend of decrease after the intervention, but no statistical differences(Body weight: 67.77 ± 13.31 vs. 68.51 ± 13.9 kg; BMI: 24.09 ± 4.00 vs 24.21 ± 4.18 kg/m2 ; body fat percentage: 32.88 ± 6.84 vs. 34.58 ± 8.37%, P > 0.05); Subjects showed different degrees of changes in peripheral blood inflammatory factors after intervention, with highly significant decrease in NF-κB (243.08 ± 89.97 vs 378.11 ± 117.52 ng/ml) and IL-6 (8.98 ± 2.26 vs 12.02 ± 3.03 pg/ml) compared to pre-intervention (P < 0.01) and SOCS-3 (277.94 ± 111.90 vs 366.23 ± 113.90 pg/ml) and TNF-α (16.29 ± 4.79 vs 20.69 ± 2.15 pg/ml) showed a significant decline (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The 8-week Tai Chi softball intervention had no significant effect on body composition, but significantly reduced NF-κB, IL-6, SOCS-3 and TNF-α inflammatory factor-related indexes in female college students.