El Imaginario Social de los Profesores de la Institución Educativa Villa Elisa, Sede B, Frente a la Actividad Física

Abstract

For the past several years, the relationships between physical activity and health have been re-emerging. This resurgence has been largely motivated by the increase in cases of cardiovascular disease. Such increase, in addition, has boosted the support received by preventive medicine, which aims to reduce the costs of traditional curative medicine. For this, preventive medicine uses the extension of a more open and dynamic concept of what is health, focusing on the creation and promotion of healthy environments and lifestyles with the purpose of forming in people the so-called "consciousness social health ”(Crawford, year cited by Devís, 2007). Currently, physical inactivity is a global public health problem. The WHO (2014) indicates that each year around 3.2 million people die from diseases linked to sedentary lifestyle. Similarly, this organization indicates that physical activity can consist of any body movement that occurs due to the activation of skeletal muscles, which leads to the consumption of energy stored in the body. In this way, actions such as working, playing, traveling, doing household and recreational tasks involve carrying out physical activity. Faced with this definition, it is understood that physical inactivity is the absence of body movements due to multiple factors. Some of these are: the development of work and domestic activities that require little physical effort, the use of leisure time in sedentary activities and the use of "passive" means of transport. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO, 2014), the lack of physical activity is related to the appearance of problems such as hypertension and high blood sugar levels. In addition, physical inactivity is often associated with harmful behaviors such as tobacco use. For these reasons, 3.2 million deaths per year are attributed to the lack of physical activity, 6% of the total annual deaths. This problem is even more worrisome when considering that the WHO (2008) has established that 31% of people worldwide - 28% of all men and 34% of all women - over 15 years of age do not do enough physical activity. Now, when the data focuses only on high-income countries, sedentary lifestyle increases to 41% for men and 48% for women, more than double that in developing countries (18 % for men and 21% for women). Such percentages of physical inactivity translate into an increased risk of death for people. Extremely intriguing situation, considering that, according to the WHO (2008), with just 30 minutes of moderate daily physical activity, the risk of mortality can be reduced by between 20 and 30%. However, it is necessary to keep in mind that people are immersed in a world defined by technology from a very young age. Electronic games, television, personal computers and the Internet have assumed a very important place in the lives of people and, particularly, in that of school-age children. The time spent interacting with these technological elements has increased considerably in recent years. This, in turn, has led to a decrease in the time spent performing physical activity (Barr, Neumark and Wall, year cited by López, Serra and Ribeiro, 2015). Additionally, it is calculated that between 2003 and 2004, the percentage of overweight in the population between 2 and 19 years of age was 33.6%, while the percentage of obesity in this same population was around 17.1% . Due to these indices, public policies have been proposed focused on reducing the prevalence and incidence of overweight and obesity in order to reduce the risk of chronic non-communicable diseases, CNCD, (López, 2008).