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A long-term fitness study at Queen’s University that is exploring the effects of exercise is once again in recruiting mode.

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“The basis of this is one size doesn’t fit all and what size fits you as an individual,” said Bernadette Garrah, project co-ordinator of the Revise Research Study with the Lifestyle and Cardiometaboic research unit at Queen’s.

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“We’re really trying to link that to exercise as well, to be the most inclusive and to be the most supportive of finding essentially what works for all individuals for exercise,” Garrah added.

The 32-week exercise study, which is examining the effects of different levels of exercise on fitness and body composition, started in September 2022 and is currently seeking members of the community between the ages of 25 and 65, who are currently not physically active. Those selected will be subject to a series of assessments at no cost, and based on the results will receive an individualized exercise prescription, where participants will come for supervised exercise at the facility.

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“Following the Canadian guidelines (of a recommended) 115 minutes of exercise a week, about 30 minutes a day, a brisk walk, that’s what our participants will do here,” Garrah said. “Thirty minutes of walking a day is kind of where this started.”

The process, Garrah said, starts with a recruitment meeting, where participants will hear from Dr. Robert Ross, who is heading the study.

“They’ll listen to Dr. Ross, the (principle investigator) on this study, basically talk about what’s going on and if they decide to sign up, then we get them enrolled right away. It starts with assessments. Once they’ve done the baseline assessments, we’ll randomize them and they’re either going to be put into the control group or the exercise group,” Garrah explained.

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“From the time that you start until the time that you’re done, it’s about eight months, 32 weeks-ish, give or take,” Garrah said. “Once you start, if you are part of the control group, it’s just as good as the exercise group, the only thing is you don’t start exercising right away. It’s essentially a placebo. That’s what it is in research. We need to have this group; it’s very important. Members of that group will do all the same assessments that exercisers do, they’re simply waiting until the 16-week mark comes around to start their exercise.”

Susan Foley, who recently finished her eight months as part of the low-amount, low-intensity exercise group, praised the study and the folks behind it.

“I learned about it from Facebook,” Foley said. “I was 63, I had had a heart attack in the past and my risk factors were sedentary lifestyle. So when I saw this study and it talked about exercising, it seemed to be everything that I needed to get exercise in my life.”

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Foley, who said she had participated in a program for heart attack survivors in the past but found that it was short term with participants asked to continue to exercise at home, which didn’t work for her. That, she said, and the one-size-fits-all regimen proved to be too onerous for her and too demanding on her knees and joints.

The Queen’s study, Foley said, came along at a time when she found herself soul-searching following the loss of her son.

“I started in around September,” she said. “I had lost my son in the summer and I thought, ‘I need to be doing something for myself and get exercise in my life, get healthier.’ My heart attack was in 2017 and I still hadn’t gotten into regular exercise. That’s what brought me in here.”

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Foley, feeling better than she says she has in a long time, almost wasn’t a participant in the program, she said. Before coming to orientation, she’d accepted a new job after having been previously retired. The day she attended orientation, she’d all but convinced herself she didn’t have the time to participate in an eight-month study, she said.

“I was thinking, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t commit to this, it’s going to take up too much time,’ even though I wanted to,” Foley said. “But when I heard Dr. Ross, the things that I was worried about and the things that I wanted for my health were all addressed. It is very individualized. They took into consideration my health past, my heart attack, also at my age. I was worried about bone density. I also was already having trouble at my age with balance, ankles and trouble going up and down stairs, pain in my knees. Plus, having had the heart attack, I have never yet been able to do a consistent exercise program. This study kind of was offering everything that I felt I needed to change.”

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Garrah said that while 32 weeks can seem like a huge commitment, the ask isn’t as overwhelming as the time frame might suggest.

“People say, ‘Oh, I have to do this for 32 weeks,’ but it’s 30 minutes of walking a day,” she said. “And we hope that you can do this for the rest of your life. If you do do this study, you’re doing this for eight months. Susan comes from Sydenham, parks, walks up to the fifth floor, is here for half an hour to an hour, depending on her exercise prescription, for eight months.”

For those who work out of town or may have other travel commitments they fear may hamper their ability to participate, the program loans Fitbit devices that participants can wear to continue to have their progress tracked and to stay on track while away.

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“We see in real time essentially when they log in for an exercise session, that can be just walking around the block, maintaining their prescription, the heart rate and the time and we gather data that way,” Garrah said.

For Foley, the results have been life-changing.

“(Susan’s) fitness improved 23 per cent,” Garrah said. “She went up a whole category in fitness for her age. Her blood pressure over time improved, her waist circumference lowered, her weight lowered. Susan showed a great result from being in this study.”

Foley is now looking for ways to stay involved with the program because of its life-altering effects.

“What a difference it has made to my health,” she said. “I’ve never been a person who’d exercised ever in my life, and I always knew that it was something that I needed to do. So doing this for the eight months, and I’ll tell you, there were things that happened … losing my son, the side benefit was that I didn’t have the depression. I’m sleeping better. These results and the improvement that I’ve made, it’s just amazing to me that I got so much benefit from doing this program in terms of building muscle, my balance, my heart health, all of the things that I was hoping to get and building exercise into my life and to see the results of doing regular exercise.

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Participation in the study is completely free once selected.

“There is no cost associated at all,” Garrah added.

Garrah also noted that the study focuses solely on health effects of introducing exercise to an otherwise sedentary lifestyle and doesn’t require participants to modify their diets.

“We’re tracking your diet simply to make sure that you’re not upping your caloric intake, or decreasing it,” she said. “There are some people who start and they’re like, ‘Wow, I feel really great, I’m going to lower my caloric intake and try to really lose weight.’ We don’t want you to do that. Any weight loss associated with the study is strictly related to the exercise that you’re doing here.”

To date, Garrah said, 113 participants have completed the study, with the hope being to raise that number to 250 over the next few years. Recruitment is happening now with the goal of adding 40 volunteers to the study before recruiting again in the fall, she added.

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To qualify, you must be between the ages of 25 and 65, have a body mass index of 20 to 40, be weight stable, a non-smoker and non-diabetic, Garrah said. Those who qualify after orientation will undergo all of their assessments on site except for a bone density test, which will be done at Hotel Dieu Hospital.

“Everything assessment-wise and exercise-wise is done here,” Garrah said.

The study’s data will serve two purposes, Dr. Ross said.

“One, that the results will be worth, as we think they will, for publication in a major medical/clinical type journal so the scientific community can see our findings and can say, ‘Boy, that’s great. Where do we go from here? This is very good,’” Ross said. “This extends knowledge. This tells us that it’s a major first step in saying that, as I like to say, maybe there’s not one size that fits all, but everybody has a size.”

And then there is the hope that the work influences public health measures, Ross said.

“There are multiple ways to achieve a benefit,” he said. “We need to tell the scientific community on one end. We also generate guidelines. We do things like that. We take that and we translate that information in a way that the general public will understand it and maybe will help people adopt, sustain and engage in physical activity.”

Interested participants can reach out to Garrah at b.garrah@queensu.ca to inquire.

janmurphy@postmedia.com

twitter.com/Jan_Murphy

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