What influences physical activity among elders? A Turkish experience from Ankara, Turkey

Although the physical activity is a very basic lifestyle activity, the physical inactivity has been estimated to cause 1.9 million deaths worldwide annually, according to the 2002 World Health Organization (WHO) Report. In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to determine the frequency of and factors influencing regular exercise among elders living in the catchment area (CA) of a primary health care unit (PHCU) of a district in Ankara. The district has 7 subregions and 50 people were interviewed from each region. From the total number of elderly in the region, these 350 were selected for the study sample. Five of the authors collected data by a self-administered questionnaire. The dependent variable of the study was “doing physical activity”, and there were various independent variables including sociodemographic characteristics and risky health behaviors, etc. Significantly positive associations were determined between “not doing regular exercise” and age of 65 years of older (odds ratio (OR) = 1.059, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.010–1.110; p = 0.018), female gender (OR = 1.992, 95% CI = 1.245–3.185; p = 0.004), presence of a chronic disease (OR = 2.704, 95% CI = 1.444–5.066; p = 0.002), and lower/higher body mass index (BMI) (OR = 2.568, 95% CI = 1.573–4.192; p < 0.001).