Physical Activity and Health Perception in Aging: Do Body Mass and Satisfaction Matter? A Three-Path Mediated Link

Abstract

Although ageing people could benefit from healthy diet and physical activity to maintain health and quality of life, further understandings of the diet- and physical activity-related mechanisms that may cause changes in health and quality of life perception are necessary. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of eating attitudes, body mass and image satisfaction, and exercise dependence in the relationship between physical activity and health and quality of life perception in older individuals. Hundred and seventy-nine late middle-aged, (55–64 yrs), young-old (65–74 yrs), and old (75–84 yrs) senior athletes (n = 56), physically active (n = 58) or sedentary adults (n = 65) were submitted to anthropometric evaluations (body mass, height) and self-reported questionnaires: Body Image Dimensional Assessment, Exercise Dependence Scale, Eating Attitude Test, and Short Form Health Survey (Physical Component Summary [PCS] and Mental Component Summary [MCS] of and health and quality of life perception). Senior athletes, physically active, and sedentary participants subgroups differed (P<0.05) from each other in body mass index (BMI) and several components of body image and exercise dependence. Senior athletes showed, compared to their sedentary counterparts, further differences (P<0.05) in eating attitudes and in both PCS and MCS. Mediation analysis showed that the relationship between physical activity habit and MCS, but not PCS, was indirectly explained by a serial mediation chain composed of objective BMI and subjective body image (dis)satisfaction. Findings confirm the relevant role of physically active life habits for older individuals to perceive good physical and mental health. The novelty of the three-path mediated link between physical activity level and mental health perception suggests that the beneficial effect of a physically active lifestyle on weight control can positively impinge on the cognitive-emotional dimension of mental health by ensuring the maintenance, also at older age, of a satisfactory body image.

Are self-reported gastrointestinal symptoms among older adults associated with increased intestinal permeability and psychological distress?

“…However, the BMI of eleven newly recruited senior orienteering athletes enrolled in an additional study was found to be normally distributed with a mean value of 23.8 ± 3.2 Std. This is in accordance with a recent study showing a lower BMI value of senior athletes compared to general older adults [ 45 ]. Hence, these findings indicate that the increased zonulin levels in the present study were not a result of overweight/obesity or cardiovascular disease.…”

The Fitness Status of German Managers and Executive Employers: A Study of Self-Perception and Reality

“…In our study, realistic managers and underestimators performed the highest number of weekly hours of leisure time activities and vice versa for the overestimators. The observation that physically active participants or managers with an athletic background showed greater ability to perceive their health status than inactive participants is in line with previous scientific reports (Condello et al 2016, van Weering et al 2011. Furthermore, participants' socio-economic backgrounds may have influenced their ability to produce a realistic self-perception (Jung et al 2012).…”

Profiles of Physical Fitness Risk Behaviours in School Adolescents from the ASSO Project: A Latent Class Analysis

“…Since including too many variables in the model for LCA could negatively affect the analysis, a total of 18 variables (included in Table 1 ) out of the 87 items contained in the ASSO questionnaires were selected and gathered into the following three dimensions: (1) biological and genetic; (2) sociocultural and environmental; (3) life habits. The inclusion of items in the different dimensions was based on previous literature suggesting risks within the context of a larger conceptual framework for health characteristics and for sedentary behaviours [ 50 , 51 , 52 ] and subsequently was adapted to fitness.…”

“…Moreover, among these factors, a total of eleven latent class indicators were chosen to represent multiple dimensions of fitness risks, i.e., biological (health risk/status) and lifestyle (physical activity/sedentariness, alcohol/smoking, and meal patterns and habits) dimensions; the other seven variables were investigated in a multivariate analysis for their role as possible predictors of class membership (gender, age, having at least one parent overweight/obese, parents’ education, family affluence scale (FAS), town of residence’s size, and school type) [ 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ].…”