THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN HYPERTENSION: A SYSTEMATIC REWIEW

Objective: identify a possible relationship between hypertension and physical activity level and, secondary, if higher levels of physical activity lead to better control of the disease. Method: systematic review using the data banks: PubMed, SciELO and Lilacs. The search was performed using the key words hypertension and IPAq. IPAq is a self-administered questionnaire for the assessment of physical activity of a population. 55 abstracts were reviewed and those involving children, adolescents 15 years old and under, other pathologies than hypertension and healthy subjects were excluded. The 11 remaining articles where analyzed. Results: Most of the studies found moderate levels of physical activity among hypertensive patients. No association between low levels of physical activity and hypertension were found in the great majority of the studies analyzed. One article found a higher risk of developing hypertension among those with moderate levels of physical activity when compared to those with high levels. The only article that compared physical activity and control of hypertension found no association. Conclusion: possibly higher levels of physical activity protect from hypertension but lower levels do not seem to be associated. The importance of physical activity in the treatment of hypertension is well established but its influence on the development and control as well as the levels that change the natural history of this disease still needs to be established.