Masoumeh Azizi
Objectives: Having serum levels of high cholesterol can cause life-threatening disease specially cardiovascular problems. However, it is believed aerobic training can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, but this effect varies considerably among exercise intervention studies. Therefore, the present study was designed to evaluate the effects of aerobic training on serum levels such as cholesterol, high density lipoprotein, Low density lipoprotein, triglycerides and anthropometric parameters of inactive women.
Methods: This study was performed as an experimental study, in which 20 healthy non-athlete females(age 27.50 ± 4.11 yr, height 163.55 ± 4.22 cm, body weight 62.81 ± 4.66 kg) randomly divided in two groups(Control group, n=10 and Experimental group, n=10). Blood samples were taken 48 h before starting the aerobic training program. Then, experimental group performed a selected aerobic training program with 65-85% of individual maximum heart rate for 3 session per week, 60 minutes per session and 6 consecutive weeks. Then another blood sample was taken following the training period. Serum levels of lipoproteins of all subjects before and after the training period were measured using standard biochemical methods. Differences between post test and pre test were evaluated using a Student′s t-test for paired samples. A P-value < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.
Results: Our results showed that the aerobic training caused significant changes(p<0.05) in HDL-cholesterol(pre-test:38.53±1.34 vs post-test:42.65±1.6, p=0.000), LDL-cholesterol(pre-test:134.61±4.82 vs post-test:127.72±4.82, p=0.001), VLDL-cholesterol(pre-test:131.98±1.93 vs post-test:127.53±1.43, p=0.000), TG(pre-test:117.05±3.21 vs post-test:92.37±7.61, p=0.001) and TC(pre-test:195.98±4.30 vs post-test:186.49±4.48, p=0.000) in experimental group but not in control group.
Conclusions: The result of the present study revealed that regular aerobic training can lead to reduce cardiovascular risk factors with changing in the lipid profiles.
