Rela？？o entre os níveis de atividade física e qualidade de vida de idosos sedentários e fisicamente ativos

introduction: the physical activity level may interfere on functional capacity, influencing on elderly health and quality of life. objective: to compare physical activity levels and quality of life among elderly who take regular physical exercise and sedentary ones, and the association between these variables. methods: the study analyzed 50 elderly people (women, n = 34, male, n = 16) aged 70.24 ± 8.8 years, divided into two groups: sedentary (g1, n = 25) and physically active (g2, n = 25). anamnesis, international physical activity questionnaire (ipaq) and the nottingham health profile (nhp) were applied. normality data was tested using the shapiro-wilk. mann-whitney u test (quality of life) and chi-square test (physical activity) were also used. the association between physical activity level and quality of life was assessed by eta2test (p < 0.05). results: in relation to the nhp, the g1 had reduced quality of life when compared to g2. for ipaq, only g1 showed a significant difference (p = 0.00) in comparison with g2. in addition, 50% of the physical activity level was associated with life quality on g1, while g2 showed 64%. conclusions: in this study, both physically active and sedentary elderly have good level of physical activity. however, regular physically active elderly showed a higher level of physical activity, which explains the better quality of life of this group.