Assessment of the nutritional and vascular state in students and high-performance baseball athletes

Abstract

Introduction: The assessment of the vascular state is one of the pillars in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases in elite athletes, as well as in the general population. The reflection indexes and the arterial stiffness of the pulse wave are objective elements that favor this assessment.

Objective: To characterize the high-performance baseball athletes from the anthropometric-nutritional and vascular points of view.

Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 28 individuals, between January and March 2016: 14 high-performance baseball athletes, youth categories (age: χ̅=18.2±1.4), and 14 medical students (age: χ̅=18.1±1.7). An anthropometric-nutritional assessment was performed and the reflection indexes as well as the arterial stiffness pulse waves were determined by the polygraph PowerLab® (ADInstruments), of the Laboratory for Basic Biomedical Sciences at the University of Medical Sciences of Santiago de Cuba.

Results: Significant increases were found in the height (p=0.001), weight (p <0.001), body mass index (p=0.003) and blood pressure of the athletes regarding the students. Although there is no significant difference among the reflection index values (p=0.085), an increase of the arterial stiffness index (p=0.02) was observed in the students (χ̅=6.1) with respect to the athletes (χ̅= 5.6).

Conclusions: There was an increase in the blood pressure and nutritional state in athletes compared to those of students, in contrast to the lower arterial stiffness in athletes. This suggests that in this type of high-performance activity, physiological protective mechanisms operate against cardiovascular diseases.