Cardiorespiratory fitness as a mediator between body fat rate and executive function in college students

Lina Zhu; Aihong He; Dandan Chen; Xiaoxiao Dong; Xuan Xiong; Aiguo Chen

doi:10.3389/fendo.2023.1293388

Cardiorespiratory fitness as a mediator between body fat rate and executive function in college students

Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2023 Dec 18:14:1293388. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2023.1293388. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Lina Zhu^#¹, Aihong He^#², Dandan Chen¹, Xiaoxiao Dong¹, Xuan Xiong¹, Aiguo Chen^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ College of Physical Education, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China.
² College of Physical Education, Yangzhou Polytechnic College, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China.
³ Nanjing Sport Institute, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: To examine whether body fat rate (BF%) is associated with cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and whether cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) mediates the association between BF% and Executive function (EF) in young adults.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 226 college students were recruited from an university. Flanker, 2-back, and odder and shifting tasks were used to assess EF. The incremental cardiopulmonary exercise tests were performed, and maximal oxygen consumption was recorded during test. The body composition measuring instrument was used to evaluate the participants' BF%.

Results: The BF% of college students was negatively correlated with each EF, BF% was negatively correlated with CRF, and CRF was negatively correlated with EF (P< 0.001). Structural equation modeling (SEM) and simultaneous analysis of several groups were used to construct mediator model. The CRF of college students plays a partial mediating role between BF% and EF, and the mediating effect accounts for 48.8% of the total effect value. Sex has no moderate effect on the relationship between BF%, CRF, and EF.

Conclusions: College students with high BF% can improve their CRF by strengthening physical exercise, thereby indirectly improving their EF. Therefore, college students who have a higher body fat percentage should be compensated for engaging in physical exercise in order to enhance their CRF and mitigate the detrimental effects of obesity and overweight on EF.

Keywords: body fat rate; cardiorespiratory fitness; executive function; mediation effect; young adult.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adipose Tissue
Cardiorespiratory Fitness*
Cross-Sectional Studies
Executive Function
Humans
Obesity
Young Adult

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was partially supported by grants awarded to Aiguo Chen from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31771243). Additionally, it was partially supported by grants awarded to LZ from the Jiangsu Funding Program for Excellent Postdoctoral Talent (2022M722696) and the Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (22TYD015).