Abstract

Background. The environment is an important determinant of physical behaviour and also affects the quality of life. A healthy lifestyle is considered to be the simplest form of hypertension prevention and therapy.

Objective. The aim of our study was to find the correlation of physical behaviour of patients with essential hypertension depending on the environment.

Method: We monitored the physical activity (PA) of 60 hypertensive patients from urban (n: 30) and rural (n: 30) environments with Actigraph accelerator. The average blood pressure values of the respondents were SBP 147 mmHg (± 8.24) and DBP 92.08 mmHg (± 8.08). Actigraph evaluated physical behaviour in the form of: sitting during the day, light, moderate and high physical activity (min/week) and steps (steps/week). The quality of life of the respondents was assessed by the Quality-of-Life SF36 – short version questionnaire.

Results. We confirm the statistically significant difference between hypertensive patients from urban and rural environments in the following categories: sitting during the day (p = 0.000052), light PA (p = 0.022009), medium PA (p = 0.0012 steps (p = 0.006993). Comparing the Quality-of-Life SF 36 questionnaire data, we find a worse quality of life in hypertensive patients living in rural areas (ø 74.40) than in hypertensive patients living in urban areas (ø 78.57).

Conclusion. Hypertensive patients living in rural areas have better physical behaviour than hypertensive patients living in urban areas, but larger population studies are needed to confirm the influence of the environment on physical activity and quality of life.

Key words: hypertension, Actigraph, environment