PHYSICAL ACTIVITI AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS OF IMAM UNIVERSISTY AND ITS EFFECT ON THEIR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Introduction:Physical activity is defined as any bodily movement produced by the skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure above the basal level, it is an important factor in improving the quality of life and preventing some medical condition. Many studies have shown that a regular physical activity increases thinking and learning skills Objectives:The purpose of this study is to determine the percentage of students who are physically active and to find out whether physical activity has a beneficial effect on their academic performance or not. Materials &methods:a cross-sectional surveydistributed to all the medical students of Imam university. We used the GPA and duration of daily studying to access the academic performance. Type and duration of physical activity were used to access the level of physical activity of the participants. We received 87 complete survey with a response rate of 18.5 %. Results:29 students out of all participant were physically active, most of the student who were physically active had a GPA of 3.00 to 3.99 ( 18 students) followed by the students who scored a GPA of 4.00 to 5.00 (7 students ). Most of the students who were physically active spent more than 180 minutes of physical activity weekly (37.9%).We found that there was an association between physical activity and academic performance with a statistical trend toward significance ( p value = 0.09 ). Conclusions:We found that students with a higher GPA tend to be more physically active than students with lower GPA. We recommend doing a similar study on a larger scale to determine the effect of physical activity on academic performance in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.