RECREATIONAL FOOTBALL AND CARDIOVASCULAR RISK FACTORS

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that “sedentary lifestyle” causes about 1.9 million deaths per year worldwide (Hammer et al., 2007). Scientific literature supports the relationship between physical activity and mortality. Indeed, physical activity has a strong and inverse relationship with cardiovascular risk factors (CRF) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). For this reason, compliance with the international guidelines should be a primary aim for public health. Countries should implement their preventive strategies in order to avoid, as much is possible, the worsening of CRF (i.e. blood data, blood pressure, anthropometric values, and aerobic fitness) in general population. Recently, scientific evidences reported high costs of public health, and such costs should be taken in consideration especially in relation to the current economic situation. It has been widely shown that regular physical activity brings benefits on physical and mental health, according to it, the WHO and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) have recommended that adults aged 18-65 years engage at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week (Pate et al, 1995, Garber at el., 2011). Unfortunately, often the low educational level, job difficulties, family commitments or other reasons, do not allow the observation of the guidelines indications (Lee et al., 2013). Research on this topic analysed different methods to improve the health of the subjects, such as walking and running at different intensities and volumes (Garber et al., 2011). It was shown an inverse dose-response relationship between training volume and risk of incurring in CVD and mortality. This relation changes in association to both volume and intensity (Hammer et al., 2007). Although, it is not yet clear what is the minimum amount of training to get some health adaptations, currently ACSM guidelines recommend a workout frequency of 5 times per week with a volume of 30 minutes per session. However, recent evidences reported that even lower volume than recommended could produce some health benefits. Thus, nowadays the most important and honest recommendation to suggest to general population is to maintain an active life style even with a lower volume than indicated by ACSM guidelines. Recreational football is a new available method able to improve health in populations. In contrast to the “traditional” activities above reported, the amount of scientific researches related to football for health is smaller. Current evidences underline that football training performed twice or three times per week, with an average duration of 60 minutes per session, may decrease the risk of CVD. Nevertheless, the information in this regard is limited (particularly concerning low training volume) and therefore this topic still needs to further studies. Recreational football seems to be a valid alternative mean able to improve population’s health, because, for its peculiarities, it can improve the compliance to health programs (Krustrup et al., 2010). This thesis entitled “recreational football and cardiovascular risk factors” was generated with the aim to deepen the existing knowledge about the beneficial health effects involved by recreational football practice. Thesis’ focus was done on three topics: a) revision of currently knowledge on futsal that is the most common form of recreational football; b) estimation of energy expenditure during recreational session in male subjects with age range of 35-55 years old; c) evaluation of the effect of one recreational football session per week in male population on cardiovascular risk factors. Sport scientists, clinicians and other professionals on this subject (prevention and health) could use this new information in public health practice. Following are listed the three studies reported in this thesis: “Brief review of the state of art in futsal” (first study): despite increasing in popularity, the numbers of scientific studies related to futsal are limited. This review gives an overview of what is hitherto reported in literature and what it might be interesting for future investigation relative to futsal. It is necessary to explore and to analyse the currently scientific evidences about this issue because the training modality of this project (recreational football) is based on the official futsal rules. However, this review does not take in consideration studies on football-futsal for health, but only on performance. "Quantification of energy expenditure of recreational football" (second study): currently there are no references in the literature on energy expenditure of recreational football performed as futsal form. This analysis allows quantifying the volume of workload necessary to achieve meaningful health improvements. In this thesis, the quantification of energy expenditure was done in men aged from 35 to 55 years. This particular age group usually takes part at recreationally football training, and thus represents the typical population. “Recreational football performed once per week decreases cardiovascular risk factors in middle-aged men. A randomized controlled trial" (third study): aim of this study is to explore the effects of recreational football training with the same target population indicated above, but analysing a lower training volume (60 minutes per week) than reported in literature. The study investigated whether there were significant clinical improvements on the main cardiovascular risk factors after a period of 12 weeks.