Physical Activity Report Writing Assignment

Physical Activity Report
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Institution
Physical Activity Report
Physical activity is considered as the best strategy for reducing chronic diseases. The exercise reduces people’s weight and helps them to live a healthy life. Jack Chen is my client who needs to improve the hours of physical activity per week to reduce his weight. The client is a middle aged man with a sedentary lifestyle at work. Hence, he needs advice to from a physical activity professional to review his work policy and allow him to have more time for physical exercise. Therefore, the work provides a report to the client and explains the quality of evidence used as well as explaining whether the feedback provided in Part A of the assignment was addressed.
The information about the importance of physical activity in preventing chronic diseases is presented in various articles. According to Pedersen and Saltin (2015, N.p), Physical activity is considered a medicine for more than 26 diseases such as psychiatric diseases, neurological diseases, metabolic diseases, cardiovascular diseases, coronary heart diseases, pulmonary diseases, muscular-skeletal disorders, and cancer. The article further discusses the effects of disease symptoms and pathogenesis including the possible mechanisms of action. Moreover, the article gives the scientific interpretation of each disease and advice as well as the dose for prescription exercise. Actually, the result showered that physical exercise is the best medicine for all the diseases described in the article. In reality, it prevents approximately 35 chronic conditions. Currently, physical exercise has a role as a medicine to first line treatment of the diseases. Moreover, the article proves that physical exercise reduces the frequency of the occurrence of the diseases. The same information is proved by the article, ‘’Recommendation for Physical activity in older adults.’’ The article describes that older adults experience difficulty in meeting their moderate and vigorous exercise goals. Moreover, the article explains that the older people are at high risk of contracting diseases. As a result, they need to improve the time spend on physical activities to help them live a healthy life. Therefore, the information in the two articles proves the same idea.
An ecological model can be used to show the facilitators and barriers that affect the client’s engagement in physical exercises. The model shows how various organisms interact with each other and their environment which can be similarly related to Chen’ case (Sallis, Owen and Fisher, 2015, p48). First, Chen lives a rudimentary lifestyle at work which is a lifestyle that prevents a person from becoming active in physical activities. Specifically, Chen works in an office and he always drives to work which gives him no time to engage in walking exercise. Luckily, he has enough time after work which he can dedicate to physical exercises. Moreover, he is a wealthy individual who can afford setting up physical exercise equipment at his home so that he can reduce his weight at his free time. Similarly, he can decide to visit places designed for physical exercise after work and get instructions from experts.
There are various studies that have been completed on the impact of physical activity on the health of older adults. Specifically, Paul et al. (2017, N.p) presents a pilot study on the effects of increasing physical activity on older adults. The study elements were given an interactive smartphone application known as STARFISH which monitors their daily engagement in physical exercises. Actually, the research found that improving the rate of physical activity in older adults has therapeutic and preventive health benefits. The rate of involvement in physical activity by the participants was improved by the use of the STARFISH smartphone application. The pilot study took a period of 6 weeks and the participants were randomly selected.
The study involved 8 older men and eight older women who were of ages 71.1 ± 5.2 years. The people were randomly selected and they engaged in the study for a period of 6 weeks. The University of the Third Age produced 4 participants, Glasgow Seniors Forum 1 participant, the University of the Glasgow 4 participants, and 7 participants were selected from friends and family members of the research team. Moreover, the research involved the use of focused groups to explore user experience and objective measure of steps for every day recorded. Ideally, the study elements used the application in groups of four people for the entire period which the study was conducted. Further, the operationalization of the behavior change techniques (BCTs) within the application was mapped against BCT Taxonomy of Michie et al. Also, ethical approval was given by the Ethics Committee of the University of Glasgow, the College of Medical, and Veterinary & Life Sciences. Every applicant gave written, informed consent of participating in the study.
The study involved classical intervention where all participants were educated before the beginning of the process. The participants were taught on how to use the application during their exercise and how to record the daily activities. However, the study was based on Fogg behavior framework where behavior is seen to have three components such as motivation, trigger, and ability (Hamper, Wendt and Zagel, 2015, p23). The individuals who were selected were highly motivated by the weight that they were going to loss at the end of the study. Therefore, this triggered them to participate fully in the process and also the process was simple which gave every person the ability to complete the study.
Generally, the use of the new technology such as the use of the application which monitors every participant’s enabled them to improve their physical activity. Ideally, every participant started at a given step count and a target set for the whole week. Thereafter, the step counts were improved for those who met their target while those who failed to meet their target remained at the same level until they pass the set step count. Therefore, the process encouraged the participants to improve their physical activity by setting for them a target a weekly target.
Apparently, the client faces the problem of being overweight and that’s why he needs to engage more in physical activity. However, the condition may lead to diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure if not managed. Nevertheless, physical activity can help in solving the problem by improving blood flow in the body (Levie et al., 206, p540). Therefore, the blood vessels will not be blocked up which reduces the chances of getting high blood pressure and other diseases. Hence, Chen needs to spend at least 150 hours per week in physical activity to reduce his weight and the chances of contracting the diseases.
The factors that influence the client’s ability to engage in physical exercises are described in the table below. Actually, the factors are common to the people of the client’s age. First, older people have little time in engaging in physical activities because of high commitment to work and taking care of their families. Additionally, mo...