Effects of eight months hydrogymnastic program in an old-aged women group with osteoporosis

Abstract

As a result of the increase in people’s life expectancy, the incidence and prevalence of the osteoporosis showed a considerable expansion. Basically there’s no evidence that the practice of hydro gymnastics acts against the deleterious effects of osteoporosis and so the study aimed to verify the changes in the bone mass of elderly people submitted to eight months of hydro gymnastics. Thirteen sedentary individuals (64 years old, 1.56 cm high and 27 Kg/m2 of body mass index BMI) were recruited and submitted to exams of bone densitometry (DXA) of two kinds, in order to collect possible evidence of bone mass alterations through direct examination. In the period, the control group was tested for twenty eight exercises, each repeated thirty times. Nine of them were for superior limbs, ten for the inferior limbs, five for the trunk and four exercises were combined, totaling eight hundred and forty repetitions. It wasn’t detected any significant alterations in the t-scores of the lumbar region, with the marks of (a) – 1.94 and (b) – 2.03 for pre and post exercises, respectively; for the region of the femur the marks were (a) – 1.21 and (b) – 0.98, pre and post respectively. Additionally to the exercises conducted it was recommended that the participants engage in other physical activities that favors calcium absorption.