Body Composition, Bone Status and Quality of Life in Older People Involved in a Municipal Program of Physical Activity and Health

IntroductionAging process is inherent to life; it entails a progressive deterioration of the functional capacity of the different body organs and systems, as a consequence of the biological changes that inexorably take place. Functional systems involution related to age is aggravated with inactivity or sedentary lifestyles (Daley & Spinks, 2000). In fact, a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of developing chronic conditions (Booth, Laye, & Roberts, 2011). However, dependency or bad health should not be the unavoidable consequence of aging (Cadore, Pinto, Bottaro, & Izquierdo, 2014). Accordingly, several papers showed that physical exercise can stop such deterioration (Gremenaux et al 2012) and, in some cases, even revert the aging process (Daley & Spinks, 2000), attaining positive effects on health and quality of life of older people. Benefits of physical exercise on the aging process have been proved at different levels. In this sense, training can improve the bone status, maintain it, or at least, reduce bone mass loss (Bocalini, Serra, & dos Santos, 2010; Rhodes et al, 2000; Stolzenberg et al, 2013). However, positive effects are not fulfilled in every anatomic zone. Likewise, increasing of strength and muscle mass in elder people has been confirmed (Cadore et al, 2010; Mayer et al, 2011; Romero-Arenas, 2013), as well as equilibrium improvement (Madureira et al, 2007). Moreover, among several other positive effects (Vincent et al, 2012), an increase in cardiovascular performance (Vigorito & Giallauria, 2014) or a decrease in bodyweight in obese people (Bocalini et al, 2012) has been achieved. Nevertheless, prescription of physical exercise needs to be pinpointed (Gremenaux et al, 2012), especially concerning bone density (Ashe et al, 2013; Gomez-Cabello, Ara, GonzalezAguero, Casajus, & Vicente-Rodriguez, 2012; Kohrt et al, 2013). Anyway, sufficient scientific evidence exists in order to design quite successfully interventions promoting an acceptable aging process. In relation to this, health and physical exercise local programs acquire a preventive approach, on account of their accessibility to a great amount of older people. These programs must respond to the achievement of several goals to ensure a healthy aging process. Thus, from a physical point of view, they should fulfill bone and muscle mass increasing, fat mass decreasing, as well as equilibrium and coordination improvement, besides improving cardiovascular parameters. Furthermore, they must foster psychological well-being and social interaction. Thereby, older people could carry out their daily activities independently, ensuring a fair quality of life.Linking with the above mentioned, the objective of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of a physical exercise program for older people, in relation to body composition, bone density and quality of life. That is, to check if improvements in this aspects are being obtained or, at least they are kept between healthy margins.These objectives are developed analyzing a program that matches typical features of most health and physical activity programs offered to older people. More precisely, 60 minutes sessions, twice a week. Exercises involved are the most commonly chosen in this kind of activities, commonly known as "gymnastics for older people". During these sessions, exercises without overloads or with small weights are carried out. They are therefore, low intensity activities, at muscle level. Besides, the progression of loads (in terms of volume and intensity) throughout the months is scarce or null.Material & methodsIn order to assess the effectiveness of the training program, an observational study was designed, with pre-post data analysis using groups created accordingly with their activity level. This study has the ethical institutional approval and it was carried out following the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (DoH) made by the World Medical Association in 2013, as well as the rules established in the good clinical practices recommended by the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices. …