Longitudinal associations of physical fitness and affect with depression, anxiety and life satisfaction in adult women with [FM], 2022, Luque-Reca

Abstract

Purpose
This study analysed the longitudinal associations of physical fitness and affect with depression, anxiety and life satisfaction at 2- and 5-year follow-up.

Methods
In 312 adult women with fibromyalgia, physical fitness was measured by performance-based tests and affect, depression, anxiety and life satisfaction were self-reported using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Beck Depression Inventory-second edition (BDI-II), State Trait Anxiety Inventory-I (STAI) and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), respectively. We conducted sequential linear regression analyses adjusted for baseline levels of depression, anxiety, life satisfaction, age, body fat percentage and education.

Results
At the 2-year follow-up, all the associations under study were significant. At the 5-year follow-up, a number of associations remained significant. First, lowering negative affect was independently associated with lower depression, anxiety and higher life satisfaction (β’s from 0.14 to 0.31). Second, favourable changes in positive affect were independently associated with lower anxiety (β = 0.21) and higher life satisfaction (β = 0.28). Third, enhancing physical fitness was related to higher life satisfaction (β = 0.16).

Conclusion
Reductions in negative affect were associated with more favourable depression, anxiety and life satisfaction at the 2- and 5-year follow-up. Improvements in positive affect were associated with more favourable anxiety and life satisfaction and enhancements in physical fitness were associated with higher life satisfaction. If corroborated in clinical–experimental research, these findings may guide the development of interventions that are tailored to the levels of physical fitness, affect and the outcome of interest (i.e. depression, anxiety or life satisfaction) in women with fibromyalgia.

Paywall, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11136-021-03058-y

 

This appears to suggest that people seem better and are capable of more when they are in better health. Truly groundbreaking stuff. Must be weird going through life with zero understand of how cause-and-effect works. Like they put a cooked meal in the oven and somehow expect this to turn on the oven and give them back raw ingredients, and other weird nonsensical associations.

It reminds me of this other groundbreaking research, which I can't find, where patients with severe neurological symptoms locked in insane asylums had smile drawings glued on their face for... uh... reasons.

Now seriously though the "love and fear" wellness cult in Donnie Dark is basically too mild to work, reality has completely overshot satire. Now this cult is basically what medicine routinely forces down people's throats.

Those conclusions truly are the stuff of fairy tales. It's amazing that you can actually routinely publish fairy tale fantasy stuff in academic medical journals. Now that's a dystopia no one could have ever possibly imagined.

 

I'd really like to increase my activity level with FM. I overdid it recently and had a bad 3-day muscle spasm that spread to half of one leg. I took so much muscle relaxant (and its efficacy wasn't great) that I developed constipation. (this is now the 4th day of gas pains).

What is evident to me is that the severity level of a person's FM dictates their fitness level (depending perhaps on their fitness habits prior to onset of illness) because the abnormal sensations that cause pain are based on movement and get worse with increased or repetitive or sudden movement beyond a tolerated level.

From now on, whenever I read the words "depression" or "anxiety" in a FM so-called research report, I will translate those terms as "distress over the illness and its limitations" and "lifelong chronic pain."