Population-Centric Method of Somatotyping Application among Female Students of the Medical Universities

The study of issues devoted to various changes in the structure and functioning of the human body is always acute. It concerns especially young people, including adolescents (in girls it is a period from 16 years to 21 years), during transitional period between puberty and the beginning of the first reproductive age. This is exactly the time of basic anthropomorphic and morphofunctional indicators and values formation, both in young men and girls. Physique type (somatotype) diagnosis is one of the most important stages of any research devoted to current issues. The environment, in which a person lives, causes his/her body to adapt to numerous exogenous factors that directly influence the formation of individual features of behavior and mindset. This causes the formation of a constitution and a human morphotype. The article presents the results of a study devoted to the practical application of the population-centered method of somatotyping and the study of the values of a number of anthropometric and morphofunctional indices in female medical students in physical education. The purpose of the study is to determine the features of anthropometric and somato-typological characteristics when applying the population-center method of somatotyping in this group of female students who took part in the study. The study was conducted in February-April 2017, involving students of I-IІІ courses of the Zaporozhye State Medical University. We used such methods as somatotyping according to the method B.A. Nikityuk-A.I. Kozlov. To do this, we conducted a morphine index determination in girls, with the definition of two values that are compared and interrelated in somatotype with each other - the index of the relative width of the shoulders and the index of the relative width of the pelvis, or the morphology index for women. We also determined such a morphological index value, as the tazo-brachial index. Anthropometric parameters (length and body weight), linear, latitudinal and span dimensions (shoulder width, pelvis width), a number of morphofunctional index values were determined. It is determined that in the group the average width of the shoulders considerably exceeds the values of the width of the pelvis. Girls of the group have broad shoulders and a narrow pelvis – the type of figure, characteristic for the male-type physique. The number of female students with shoulder width exceeding the width of the pelvis in the entire study group was 42 (87,5 %), and with a pelvic width, greater than the width, only 6 (12,5 %) female students. Taking into account the application of the population-centered method of somatotyping, it was determined that in this group of female students, the width of the shoulders significantly exceeds the width of the pelvis – the type of figure that is characteristic of the male physique. Based on the results of determining the values of the index of the relative width of the bone pelvis (the morphine index for women), while performing somatotyping according to the technique B.A. Nikityuk-A.I. Kozlov found that the majority of female students – 33 (68,77%) have a narrow pelvis (stenopyelia). It is also determined that girls with a rectangular body shape predominate among female students – 40 (83,33%), 5 (10,42%) female students with a trapezoid shape and 3 (6,25%) – with an average body shape. It was found out that the normoevolytic type of the age-related constitutional evolution of the organism is determined only in 3 (6,25%) female students of the study group. The data obtained as a result of the research have practical application in assessing the results of the level of individual health of female students and in conducting physical education classes at the university.