Cardiovascular effects, body composition, quality of life and pain after a Zumba fitness program in Italian overweight women.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this paper was to investigate the cardiovascular effects, body composition, quality of life and pain after a 12-week Zumba fitness program in a group of overweight women through an observational study, community physical activity program involving twenty-seven overweight women (38.9±9.7 years). METHODS: Cardiometabolic profile, body composition, quality of life and pain were assessed after a 12-week Zumba fitness program. RESULTS: Significant improvements in body weight and BMI (71.5 vs. 74.2 kg, 28.02 vs. 29.1 kg/m²), in circumferences (arm: 27.9 vs. 30.3, waist: 80.1 vs. 83.9, hip: 102 vs. 107.4 cm), in fat and muscular mass (25.2 vs. 26.9, 34.4 vs. 27.2 kg), in intracellular (19 vs. 17.5 kg), and in extracellular water (14.9 vs. 16.8 kg) were recorded. A decrease in blood pressure was observed (118.3/69.4 vs. 125/75.5 mmHg). Cardiovascular response to the maximal exercise test showed a decrease in heart rate and in systolic blood pressure with an increase of work (118.9 vs. 116.7 watt). SF-36 showed variations in physical functioning (99.4 vs. 92.8) and in the limitation on the emotional role (88.9 vs. 66.6). With regards the Brief Pain Inventory-SF, a decrease in pain severity and pain interference score was seen (0.5 vs. 1.6, 0.06 vs. 0.5). CONCLUSIONS: Results demonstrate that Zumba fitness can be an effective way to obtain beneficial health effects and that it can also be recommended for overweight women.

A New Type of Physical Activity from an Ancient Tradition: The Sardinian Folk Dance "Ballu Sardu".

The aim of our study was to determine if the Sardinian folk dance ballu sardu (BS) can be identified as an effective workout regimen in terms of its exercise intensity (EI) and energy expenditure (EE) and if people who perform BS fulfill the recommendations of the American College of Sports Medicine on the prescription of exercise in healthy subjects. Twenty healthy volunteers (10 men, 10 women, 35.2 ± 6.3 years of age, BMI 23.0 ± 3.4 kg/m²) with BS experience (mean = 20.7 ± 8.9 years) were enrolled. All subjects underwent a maximal cardiopulmonary exercise test. Then they carried out a performance of about a quarter of an hour of BS in its most common variant of dance in a circle, ballu tundu. During the BS performance, the dancers wore a heart rate monitor to record all relevant data. The dancers displayed a good aerobic capacity (VO2max 44.1 ± 3.2 ml·kg(-1)·min(-1)). Their average HR during the BS execution was 146.3 ± 5.3 bpm, corresponding to an EI of 79.9% ± 6.5% of HRmax. The estimated average VO2 was 78.6% ± 15.4% of VO2max; MET/min and EE were 9.8 ± 1.5 and 11.2 ± 2.4 Kcal/min, respectively. It is concluded that the BS can be described as a vigorous physical activity. An ancient yet still widespread leisure activity embedded in the Sardinian culture, it meets some contemporary exercise recommendations for a healthy lifestyle.

Role of heart rate and stroke volume during muscle metaboreflex-induced cardiac output increase: differences between activation during and after exercise.

We hypothesized that the role of stroke volume (SV) in the metaboreflex-induced cardiac output (CO) increase was blunted when the metaboreflex was stimulated by exercise muscle ischemia (EMI) compared with post-exercise muscle ischemia (PEMI), because during EMI heart rate (HR) increases and limits diastolic filling. Twelve healthy volunteers were recruited and their hemodynamic responses to the metaboreflex evoked by EMI, PEMI, and by a control dynamic exercise were assessed. The main finding was that the blood pressure increment was very similar in the EMI and PEMI settings. In both conditions the main mechanism used to raise blood pressure was a CO elevation. However, during the EMI test CO was increased as a result of HR elevation whereas during the PEMI test CO was increased as a result of an increase in SV. These results were explainable on the basis of the different HR behavior between the two settings, which in turn led to different diastolic time and myocardial performance.

Estimating stroke volume from oxygen pulse during exercise.

This investigation aimed at verifying whether it was possible to reliably assess stroke volume (SV) during exercise from oxygen pulse (OP) and from a model of arterio-venous oxygen difference (a-vO(2)D) estimation. The model was tested in 15 amateur male cyclists performing an exercise test on a cycle-ergometer consisting of a linear increase of workload up to exhaustion. Starting from the analysis of previous published data, we constructed a model of a-vO(2)D estimation (a-vO(2)D(est)) which predicted that the a-vO(2)D at rest was 30% of the total arterial O(2) content (CaO(2)) and that it increased linearly during exercise reaching a value of 80% of CaO(2) at the peak workload (W(max)) of cycle exercise. Then, the SV was calculated by applying the following equation, SV = OP/a-vO(2)D(est), where the OP was assessed as the oxygen uptake/heart rate. Data calculated by our model were compared with those obtained by impedance cardiography. The main result was that the limits of agreement between the SV assessed by impedance cardiography and the SV estimated were between 22.4 and -27.9 ml (+18.8 and -24% in terms of per cent difference between the two SV measures). It was concluded that our model for estimating SV during effort may be reasonably applicable, at least in a healthy population.