Affect and Adherence to Exercise in Migraine Patients
Oliveira AB, et al.
Headache Medicine, v.10, n.2, p.43-50, 2019
49
20 minutes), with gradual, progressive load increment
until targeted perceptual (e.g., keep between 11 and 13
on 20-point Borg´s scale, the verbal anchors “Light” and
“Somewhat hard”, respectively), affective (e.g., no lower
than +1 on feeling scale, the verbal anchor “Good”), and
cardiovascular parameters (e.g., not above ventilatory
threshold, or ~70 % of maximal age-predicted HR). Other
exercise prescription approaches (e.g., HIIT) should be
also tested in this population to establish safe, enjoyable,
and realistic exercise routines that assure adherence.
One should be aware of several limitations in this
study while interpreting these ndings. This study found
a large effect size for the affect variables outcome, but
the small sample size yielded underpowered data (β =
0.73), and limit extrapolation from the regression model.
From clinical practice, we perceive that migraine patients
interested in participating in studies with physical exercise
represent a minority of this population, and this may
constitute selection bias. Additionally, based on headache
diaries checking, physical activity was not a trigger
among the patients of this study, most participants were
women, and there were some restrictive inclusion criteria.
All these factors limit the generalizability of our results.
Importantly, the expectation towards improvement in
headaches through exercise training might have rendered
patients more motivated than control individuals. Yet,
if this was true, our results would be underestimated.
Another limitation concerns to performance bias, as
the experimenters that conducted the exercise sessions
were not blinded to participants’ conditions. This could
have resulted in unequal attention delivered by the
experimenters to the participants, inuencing the affect
scores. Lastly, although the exercise protocol tried to
reproduce a regular aerobic exercise session, it is not
possible to exclude the inuence of factors related to the
laboratory/experimental settings.
The strengths of this study are the prospective design,
the use of gold-standard measure of cardiorespiratory
tness, and standardized exercise testing and prescription
based on ventilatory threshold, which allowed us to
compare subjective psychological parameters in response
to an objective, physiologic stimulus.
CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, the affective response to an aerobic
exercise of equivalent physiological intensity is reduced in
migraine patients compared to non-headache individuals,
and predicted adherence to future participation in an
exercise-training program. Interventions with physical
activity/exercise should adopt the feeling scale as a
complementary parameter of exercise intensity and
exploit activities that elicit higher affective responses.
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