Abstract
Background: The population of older adults is increasing worldwide, which brings attention to the importance of healthy aging. Adoption of healthy lifestyle activities such as participating in physical activity on a daily basis is key to maintaining physical and mental health. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of participation in a 12-week multidimensional exercise program on health behavior and biopsychological factors of older adults living in Northeastern Mexico.Methods: A quasi-experimental study was conducted with 45 older adults (35 females and 10 males; M = 67.24 ± 5.73 years). The participants were assigned to an experimental group (EG; n = 23) that participated in a 12-week exercise program and a control group (CG; n = 22). Pre- and post-analyses of the exercise intervention data were carried out to investigate the participants’ health-related variables including physical activity levels, blood pressure, self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and blood lipids profiles.Results: The results indicated that the exercise intervention contributed to significant improvements in the older adults’ health-related variables for the EG when contrasted with the control group. For instance, the EG significantly improved systolic (p < 0.001) and diastolic (p < 0.027) blood pressure, blood lipids [e.g., cholesterol (p < 0.05)], triglycerides (p < 0.05), self-esteem (p < 0.005), and depressive symptoms (p < 0.002) as well as physical activity (p < 0.001) levels. The results also demonstrated that only those individuals in the EG diagnosed with disease benefited from improved self-esteem and physical activity levels when contrasted with their healthy counterparts.
Highlights
As the global population of older adults continues to increase, activities such as participation in physical activity have been found to be essential to promote healthy aging and quality of life
The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the 12-week multidimensional exercise program on health behavior, the biological factors of blood profiles, body weight, body mass index, blood pressure, and nutritional status and the psychological factors of depression and self-esteem of older adults who resided in Northeastern Mexico
The results of this study showed that the older adult participants showed improved physical activity levels as well as various biopsychosocial factors such as blood lipids profiles, blood pressure, and depressive symptoms
Summary
As the global population of older adults continues to increase, activities such as participation in physical activity have been found to be essential to promote healthy aging and quality of life. Social problems may include concerns about raising social and economic costs due to increases in medical expenses for older adults with health problems (Unsar and Sut, 2010) and/or development of negative stereotypes toward the older population in society (Lamont et al, 2015) These health and social impacts may result in older populations’ negative self-perception and low self-esteem that may cause loss of function and decreases in the quality of life (Unsar and Sut, 2010). In Mexico, only 12.2% of older adults engage in a recommended amount of physical activity (Ramos, 2016) Such a low level of physical activity can be correlated with physical and psychological health issues for this age group. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of participation in a 12-week multidimensional exercise program on health behavior and biopsychological factors of older adults living in Northeastern Mexico
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