Young Adult Lifestyle and Cardiovascular Risk
Introduction: Lifestyle directly influences cardiovascular health; therefore, encouraging young people to adopt healthy habits through physical activity, dietary re-education, and non-use of tobacco can prevent the emergence of these diseases. Objectives: To evaluate the factors that predispose the cardiovascular health of young adults to risks, making a correlation with lifestyle. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach. Some data were collected, such as blood pressure, muscle strength, total and fractionated cholesterol, blood glucose, anthropometric measurements, bioimpedance, heart rate, double product recovery after exercise test, and lifestyle. Results: There were 52 participants, and only 31 completed all assessments. The mean age was 42.5±6.1 years. The majority were female; there were six hypertensive patients, two with isolated systolic hypertension, and four had high blood glucose; all recovered their heart rate and the double product at the end of the fifth minute after exercise. The cardiovascular risk measured by the Framingham score was moderate at 12% and severe for 9% of participants; the rest were classified as low risk. The Framingham score was associated with lifestyle (r-043). Cardiovascular risk was significantly increased for those participants who declared living in a stressful environment (p=0.03), for smokers (p=0.003), for males p=0.0006, for sedentary people (p=0.003). Conclusion: Severe and moderate cardiovascular risk was found for 22% of the sample. Male sex, smoking, sedentary lifestyle and living in a stressful environment were the main cardiovascular risk factors found.