Descripción del somatotipo e IMC en una muestra de adolescentes de colegios municipalizados de la ciudad de Temuco - Chile

Abstract

Bad nutrition has become a public health problem, similar situation had happened in Chile studies on body composition, nutritional state, and body mass index (BMI), are parameters recommended by the WHO for determining human beings' nutritional state. This study has been carried out to describe the adolescent nutritional situation of the urban public schools in Temuco - Chile. Nine thousands and ninety nine subjects were evaluated, 543 men (54.7%) and 450 women (46.3%), between 6 and 14 years old, all students at urban public schools. In order to obtain the Somatotype the anthropometric Heath & Carter method was used, classifying BMI according to the WHO norms. Men were more endomorphic than women, this difference was statistically significant (p=0.005). To compare the ectomorphic and mesomorphic components of somatotopic in relation to sex, this values were statistic statistically significant to men, but the endomorphic value was statistically significant was to women. Regarding to the total sample, 19.4% was obese and 23.1% was overweight. Then, according to men, 19.3% were obese and a 23.9% were overweight, and women had a 22.0% of overweight and a 19.6% were obese. It was observed a prevalence of the endomesomorphic component in women and mesoendomorphic in men. These results show an obesity prevalence of 19.4% and an overweight of 23.1% within the evaluated population getting closer to the national standards of the adult population, which corresponds to a 50% according to the a survey given by the Chilean Ministry of Health (MINSAL), the probable factors are the modification of lifestyle, food and sedentary effect that in the Chilean ninth region reaches a 96.4% out of the population.