Are you between the ages of 40 and 60?
Are you mostly sedentary but otherwise healthy and able to perform routine daily activities? Are you exercising less than 90 minutes per week, or no more than three days a week? Are you interested in learning how exercise might improve your physical and mental health?
If the answer is “yes” to those questions – and you’d also like $50 – Beth Moxley and Shaine Henert want to meet you.
Thanks to a generous donation to the School of Nursing in the College of Health and Human Sciences, the faculty investigators are studying how exercise might help people’s moods.
Moxley, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing, and Henert, associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, are launching a study to assess what 150 minutes of exercise each week would mean to members of this population.
Participants in the research will receive HbA1c tests, fitness assessments, body composition measurements, wrist-worn activity trackers and personalized exercise programs in addition to the stipends.
“They are going to have a prescription for exercise consistent with the recommended guidelines for sedentary people,” Moxley says. “That’s important because 30 minutes of brisk walking every day is sort of the mantra, and everybody should kind of drill that into their heads. That’s the minimum, and some people don’t do it, which is amazing. Even teenagers don’t do it.”
However, she adds, “if we can motivate people to do that – with us partnering with them to see if there are any outcomes, a bit of a bonus with incentive pay, a little bit of education and collaboration, supervision and support – then all of that is good to serve as an incentive.”
Becoming physically active is smart for people for all ages, Henert says.
Sedentary adults “probably don’t have a long history, or a recent history, of being physical active, and the research shows us that if you’re inactive right now, you’re far more likely to be inactive when you get into older adulthood,” he says.
“Now seems like a good time to know more and to develop interventions that will help our sedentary middle-aged adults be more active and understand that they don’t have to commit to hours and hours and hours of exercise each week,” he adds.
“What we’re focused on is meeting the national physical activity guidelines, which is a moderate amount of time and intensity to be active, and we want to support those recommendations with improvements in mental well-being, such as anxiety, depression and resilience, and in physical well-being, understanding how our body responds biologically to exercise.”
Candidates for the study will first need medical clearance from their physicians.
Once they obtain that permission, they’ll complete questionnaires to describe their physical activity on the job and recreationally. They also will meet with the research team for low-intensity fitness assessments that will facilitate the design of specific exercise programs.
During the second visit, they’ll receive the activity trackers.
“It’s like a Fitbit but it’s not a Fitbit. It’s a little bit more user-friendly. We selected this one because it’s a little easier to navigate, which is important for folks who maybe don’t have a lot of experience using an activity tracker,” Henert says.
“We’ll help them get the activity trackers all set up, load the app on their phones and then explain what they’ll need to interface with in terms of what they need to look for on their app and on the activity tracker itself,” he adds. “The nice thing about this activity tracker is its very long battery life, so out participants won’t have to worry a whole lot about charging it.”
And then the exercise begins.
Each of the exercise programs will reflect the age, gender and current fitness ability of the participant.
Participants will follow their personalized instructions for four weeks while Moxley, Henert and clinical coordinator Rachel Kowal check in weekly. They also will need to record their progress manually to confirm the accuracy of the activity trackers.
Following the four weeks, participants will return for final meetings to complete follow-up surveys, post-research fitness assessments and debriefing that will include answers to whatever questions they have about the experience.
Many are likely to have spent the four weeks putting one foot in front of the other, Henert says.
“In general, we’re going to recommend to all of them to walk,” he says.
“We’ll know more once we meet them and get to know more about their fitness history, but we’re going to assume that they’re not very active currently; they haven’t done a whole lot of physical activity, perhaps not for a while, and walking is generally pretty safe. It’s usually inexpensive. You don’t need a whole lot of equipment.”
Researchers Moxley and Henert complement each other well; Moxley brings a background in nursing, anatomy and physiology, including brain-derived neurotrophic factors (BDNF), while Henert is a scholar of exercise psychology.
“We really want to know: Did this work?” Moxley says. “We’re looking at body composition, metabolic, cardiovascular and a psychological variable – the BDNF biomarker – and because this exercise is moderate to vigorous in intensity, we really want to see if it makes a difference in any of the measures.”
They also hope the up to 30 participants learn something.
Henert’s message is that exercise is accessible, and that its benefits are worth the work of overcoming the mental obstacles that many people erect between them and the pursuit of physical fitness.
“I don’t want to call exercise ‘easy,’ because it’s not easy for everybody, but it doesn’t have to be super difficult for us to achieve physical activity levels that lead to improvements in our mental health and well-being and our physical health and well-being,” Henert says.
“Too often, people feel like, ‘I have to get a gym membership, and I have to go there five days a week,’ or, ‘I’ve got to do a high-intensity training workout,’ or, ‘I’ve got to get up run in the morning,’ or, ‘I’ve got to do these intense workouts that I see other people doing, or that I used to do when I was younger,’ ” he adds.
“But it’s not very realistic for people to do that, particularly for people who aren’t doing it now, so I think increasing their awareness of what’s realistic for them, and what they can do to help significantly improve their mental and physical health and well-being, are important things to increase their confidence and their self-efficacy.”
Moxley agrees.
“I hope they learn that exercise is feasible and enjoyable,” she says, “and that they’ll continue to do it.”
The study is part of the NIU School of Nursing Hope Faculty Fellowship grant.
For more information, or to apply, email emoxley@niu.edu or rkowal@niu.edu.
