Gender features of the physical state of medical university professors of pre-retirement and retirement age

Abstract

In the past few years, the number of elderly people has been growing in Russia. Every fifth retired person does not resign and continues to work. The situation with employees that have already reached the retirement age is distinctly special in the country's higher education establishments. Therefore, the task of studying the peculiarities of health of higher school professors that have already passed the retirement age threshold or are approaching it is an urgent one, the purpose of such a study being prolongation of the "healthy old age". It is necessary to factor in gender specifics, since, according to the statistics, men run greater risks of developing chronic non-communicable diseases than women. The purpose of this study was to investigate the gender-related peculiarities of the physical condition and the rate of aging of medical university professors of pre-retirement and retirement age with the aim to develop measures enabling such employees to maintain a high level of working efficiency. The study involved 169 teachers aged 55-70. A set of anthropometric measurements was taken. The participants had their blood pressure measured, level of physical condition and their adaptive potential assessed. The rate of aging and biological age were calculated for all the participants with the help of A.G. Gorelkin and B.B. Pinkhasov's formulas. The study revealed significant differences in most morpho-functional status indicators signaling of the greater cardiovascular system disease risks run by male teachers compared with their female peers. However, female participants presented significantly more cases of obesity, which explains the revealed differences in the rate of aging that was higher among women.