Introduction:

Adequate nutrition, smoking cessation and alcohol cessation are preventive and treatment measures, help prevent complications of gastroesophageal reflux disease. However, there are still doubts about the intensity of physical activity and its benefits in the development of the disease.

Objective:

To determine the association between physical activity and gastroesophageal reflux disease in a sample of Peruvian population.

Methods:

Analytical cross-sectional study with the use of secondary databases from the COHORT CRÓNICAS study. The main variable was the presence or absence of gastroesophageal reflux disease, which was determined through a self-report by medical diagnosis. The independent variable was physical activity, whose levels were defined according to the protocol of the international physical activity questionnaire. This variable was dichotomized into "low" and "medium / high".

Results:

A total of 3211 subjects were worked on. The prevalence of gastroesophageal reflux was 4.48% and 5.36% practiced moderate / severe physical activity. In the multiple regression, it was observed that patients with low physical activity had 391% greater frequency of presenting gastroesophageal reflux, compared to those who carried out moderate / high physical activity; After adjustment for the covariates: sex, age, socioeconomic status, smoking status, alcohol drinker, physical activity and body mass index; a PR=4.91; 95%CI: 1.19 - 20.23 was obtained.

Conclusions:

The study showed that moderate / high intensity physical activity is associated with a lower prevalence of gastroesophageal reflux disease. If the current results are confirmed in future research, the findings of this study could be important for the prevention and treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease, through the intensity of physical activity.