17 research outputs found
Online health promotion program and individualized health coaching for veteran wellbeing
The pandemic has highlighted the need for accessible and effective health promotion as Canadians are isolated from their communities during social distancing measures. A web-based health promotion program in which participants also received individualized email-based health coaching from medical students has been available during the pandemic to empower veterans and their family members to engage in healthy lifestyle change.
Health coaches’ email interactions with participants used techniques of motivational interviewing, including an empathetic style, statements of affirmation, and reflections. Open-ended questions were useful in gaining insight into the participant’s current lifestyle, including habits, challenges, and coping strategies. As services have transitioned online and individuals have become more isolated, the connection formed between online health coaches and individuals participating in the health promotion program became crucial in countering the mental and physical health repercussions of the pandemic.
In a preliminary analysis, we show that web-based health promotion with health coaching, for Canadian Veterans and their families, leads to significant weight loss, increased activity and improvement in wellbeing metrics such as sleep and stress.
The medical students acting as health coaches were able to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges involved in behaviour change, something that is seldom covered in detail in the medical school curricula. Medical students were also able to practice their motivational counseling skills surrounding lifestyle changes. Given the lack of available evidence for web-based health promotion that targets veterans and their families, these preliminary results appear promising, with longer-term follow-up planned for the next two years
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Examination of various physiological, biochemical and psychological parameters of overtraining in response to a season of training in competitive swimmers
Staleness, a severe chronic fatigue state occurring as a result of the failure of an athlete to adapt to overtraining, has received considerable attention. Reliable, sensitive, and specific markers which predict this phenomenon have yet to be discovered. This study examined the effects of overtraining on physiological, biochemical, and psychological variables in 10 swimmers during a 6 month training season. Eight active, college students who were not training for competition were used as controls. Variables were measured on 5 separate occasions: the 1st week of training, mid-season, during peak training, at the beginning of the taper period, and following the taper.One aspect of the study was to examine the data for markers of overtraining. Good markers were considered those which showed a dose-response relationship between that variable and training yardage in the swimmers with no changes for the controls. Repeated measures factorial ANOVA\u27s revealed a limited number of variables showing significant changes corresponding to overtraining in the swimmers only. These included the rating of daily functioning, the rating of general state of well being, and illness (p .05). Other variables which showed no significant differences, yet exhibited trends which corresponded to overtraining in the swimmers were percent body fat, orthostatic heart rate, maximal oxygen consumption, hemoglobin concentration, peak lactate, various Profile of Mood State (POMS) variables, and rating of sleep quality.In addition, a decrease in performance and a significant increase in the POMS composite score were used as criteria to indicate excessive training fatigue (acute) or staleness (symptoms persisting after 2 weeks of decreased training or rest). Although no swimmer experienced staleness, a group of three swimmers developed criteria for excessive training fatigue. No variables showed consistent changes from baseline for all three of these swimmers.A number of overtraining markers tracked well with increases and decreases in training yardage for the group, however, when these variables were applied to the individuals experiencing excessive training fatigue no markers proved reliable. Future research should concentrate on tracking individuals using more data points, different markers, and the interaction of various markers to develop a better predictive index
Articles Years of life lost and healthy life-years lost from diabetes and cardiovascular disease in overweight and obese people: a modelling study
Summary Background Despite the increased risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes associated with excess bodyweight, development of a clinically meaningful metric for health professionals remains a challenge. We estimated the years of life lost and the life-years lost from diabetes and cardiovascular disease associated with excess bodyweight