The aim of the study is to assess the physical leisure time activity among the students of grade I–III of junior high school (aged 13–16) – during the school year and holidays – and identify possible causal factors of physical inactivity in this social group. The relationship between participation in sport for all during the school year (regular, periodic, sporadic) and during holidays (physically active/passive) and socio-demographic variables characterizing the structure was analyzed using the Chi 2 test. The relationship between respondents inactivity and those traits was assessed using log-linear analysis. The higher the grade (especially among girls), the more physically inactive individuals, the number of which grew during the school year as well as during holidays. The risk factors for inactivity included high BMI, living in the countryside and female sex. In case of girls (76.3%) the risk of inactivity increased by almost 1.4 times, as it did (OR = 0.75) with regard to living in rural areas (76.4%). The chance of being active increases more than 3-fold among those with normal BMI (28.0%) and the underweight (29.9%). Adolescents’ inactivity (increasing along with the grade pupils are in) points to the shortcomings of Polish process of education and an urgent need for system-based approach to promote active lifestyle in this social group.
Nowadays, the act of taking care of one’s appearance has become a marker of a healthy lifestyle among both women and (mostly metrosexual) men. Physical activity plays a minor role, and tourist trips are more and more frequently combined with the consumption of medical services, including surgery and aesthetic dermatology. The aim of this study is to explain the phenomenon of medical tourism, particularly the specialized category of medical tourism for liposuction treatments, and its relation to the values of physical culture. The work is theoretical; it is supplemented by references to the presented issues in the form of a case study of “lipotourism” and its participants. As a result, the profile of a medical tourist has been identified against which a “lipotourist” constitutes an inimitable case. It seems that although the purpose for the travels of such a tourist is recognized, it still remains a matter of conjecture in terms of experience and behavior. To prove the thesis that participating in tourism for medical reasons can affect one’s quality of life, certain conditions must be met: 1. The applied treatment must not cause (permanent) damage to the patient’s health; 2. Liposuction must be treated exclusively as an (invasive) aesthetic surgery and not as a method of weight reduction; 3. Regular physical activity and a healthy diet and lifestyle must be included in the process of body shaping, and 4. Health and physical education must be treated as superior values of quality of life. The existing considerations should only be regarded as preliminary.
The objective of the presented paper was to compare the selected variables of lifestyle in first - year students at two universities in Košice. The research sample group consisted of the first - year students of the P. J. Šafá rik University in Košice (UPJŠ, n=918, 651 women and 267 men) and the Technical University in Košice (TUKE, n=653, 239 women and 414 men). We compiled our own test battery named “The risk factors of obesity and its prevention through physical activity” and administered it to students at the beginning of the respective academic years (September 2012 and September 2013). Presented paper focuses on questions related to: the students' satisfaction with their lifestyle, students expressing a need to change their lifestyle, frequency of structured physical activity, motivation to engage in structured physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and a structure of leisure activities. To process the collected data, we used the statistical software R. To test the signific ance of differences between the universities we used the Wilcoxon rank - sum test. N o significant difference between the universities was found on variables indicating the satisfaction with lifestyle. The most repeated lifestyle components that students of b oth universities would like to change were physical activity and dietary habits. These data reflect the findings that in the last half year over 61.5 % of UPJŠ students and 48.9 % of TUKE students were engaged in structured physical activity either irregul arly or they were not engaged in any structured physical activity at all. Another analysis of significant difference (p<0.001) between the two universities was employed to indicate the frequency with which students engaged in structured physical activity. The analysis revealed a higher frequency in students of TUKE. The analysis also confirmed that the gender of a respondent had a greater influence on that difference than the university they attended. The students of both universities indicated that figure (appearance), enjoyment, health and physical fitness were the main motivators for structured physical activity. The difference between the universities, with regard to variables indicating the time which students spent engaged in sedentary behaviours was s ignificant (p<0.001) during both working days and weekend days, where gender had no influence on this difference. Sedentary behaviours prevailed among the most common leisure activities in students of both universities. At the beginning of their university studies, lifestyle of a large number of first - year students at the two universities is characterized by the low level of engagement in structured physical activity and by sedentary leisure activities, with the existing differences between genders and the universities.
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