A necessidade de parâmetros referenciais de cortisol em atletas: Uma revisão sistemática

Abstract

The cortisol levels are an important variable to measure stress. Yet there is still controversy about the-se hormone responses to physical exercise, sports training and competition. The purpose of this sys-tematic review was to analyze the objectives, methodological procedures and main results of studies reporting cortisol hormone as a measurement of stress in athletes. There was a predominance of sali-vary cortisol (54.6%) in a wide variety of sports. Most research was conducted in individual sports (72.8%), male subjects (59%) and high-performance or professional athletes (91%). Several proce-dures and times of collection have been described in the literature. Changes in salivary cortisol level found in this review showed that most sports were considered as a possible source of stress for ath-letes. The highest increase in cortisol levels was found between baseline and post-competitive situa-tion, as well as between samples taken on the competition day and those measured at the same time at rest. As a conclusion, there is the need to standardize the procedures for cortisol assessment in ath-letes, as well as the control of circadian rhythm in order to meet the reference values. © Fundação Técnica e Científica do Desporto.