Influência dos ritmos circadianos no desempenho fisiológico, psicomotor e físico de universitários

Abstract

The circadian rhythm consists on the cyclic changes that occur in the 24 h period, which might interfere in the human performance. The purpose of this study was to compare the results of the physiologic variables, of the reaction time and of the functional variables obtained in different times of the day. The 30 volunteers (15 men and 15 women) performed a battery of tests in the morning (10 h), in the afternoon (16h) and at night (20h). The analyzed variables were the body temperature (oral temperature), the heart rate, the blood pressure (systolic and diastolic), the reaction time (simple and choice), the flexibility (sit-and-reach), the agility (shuttle run), the velocity (30 m sprint), the muscle power (medicine ball throw, long and sargent jump) and muscle strength (dynamometry). The results were submitted to a variance analysis in a linear mixed model (3 shifts) with Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons, with a 5 % significance level. In the majority of the studied variables there was no circadian variation. Only the body temperature and the agility for the male group and the systolic blood pressure and the vertical jump for the female group presented statistically significant differences. The data suggest that the response of the majority of the studied variables, inserted in a battery of tests, do not suffer influence of the time of day (10, 16 and 20 h).