Influência da atividade física na ocorrência de sarcopenia em idosos atendidos na atenção primária em um município da Amazônia Legal

Abstract

With the recurrent changes in the demographic pyramid, the number of elderly people has increased considerably in Brazil, thus causing some changes in the standard of care of basic health units. One of the main problems in the elderly is the loss of muscle mass, also known as geriatric syndrome or sarcopenia. This syndrome begins from the age of 40 and gets worse with advancing age. Caused by several factors such as poor diet and physical inactivity, older people tend to lose large percentage of muscle mass. In this sense, the present study aimed to evaluate the elderly, from the CRAS elderly group from the Jardim Paulista neighborhood in the municipality of Sinop-MT, regarding the level of physical activity and muscle loss. The study counted on the participation of 52 elderly who attend the primary health care unit and who voluntarily accepted to participate in the research. All elderly aged 60 years or older who were registered in CRAS were included and those who had the functions unfavorable cognitive responses to answer the questionnaires and the elderly who were unable to perform proposed physical and functional tests. Data collection was divided into four stages: mini-mental application, survey of socio-demographic and epidemiological conditions, application of the international physical activity questionnaire (IPAQ), and evaluation of sarcopenia. Data were evaluated by the SPSS software and related to the degree of sarcopenia, the association between sarcopenia and gender of participants and the association between sarcopenia and level of physical activity performed by each elderly person. Through the results it was possible to verify that 60.6% of the women are physically active, predominating over the male gender, which represented only 26.3% of our sample constituents, 59.61% of the elderly showed a suggestive sign of sarcopenia, of these, 19 are female and 12 male. The size of the sample was a limiting factor in this study, although the elderly group had 60 participants, a larger number of sedentary individuals could give a broader view of sarcopenia in this population. Other studies comparing sedentary and active elderly would be important to verify the role of exercise in the installation of sarcopenia.