Avaliação nutricional, descrição de hábitos de vida e análise antropométrica e bioquímica de idosos participantes de grupos de terceira idade

Abstract

Due to the increasing of the elderly population, there is the need for having studies which investigate the relations among health conditions, elderly nutrition and protection and prevention factor. We aim at evaluating the food consumption, the nutritional status and the life style of elderly who participated of senior citizens groups. As an evaluation protocol, we applied questionnaires to analyze the socio-economic profile, the food consumption, the quality of life, the physical activity and we performed an anthropometric evaluation, blood pressure measurement, as well as laboratory examination of glucose, triglycerides, total cholesterol and fractions. We evaluated the food consumption using a questionnaire of food consumption frequency, the quality of life using the WHOQOL-old and the WHOQOL-bref, and for the physical education evaluation, the international questionnaire of the physical education. To verify the associations between the outcomes of the variables, we used hypothesis tests measures of association, regression and correlation, with a significance level of p ≤ 0.05. The results indicated that the population who was studied shows a good socio-economic level and school education, and a bigger feminization; a bigger prevalence of the hypertension as an self-reported illness; in the BMI (body mass index) we verified overweight, increased risk of metabolic diseases in the female sex, the glucose as an biochemical indicator was significant for the diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and osteoporosis. In the physical activity, the elderly are considered active and, as important discoveries, we verified that the elderly who showed overweight stayed less time sat when compared with the low weight and eutrophic