Mindfulness Meditation Versus Physical Exercise: Comparing Effects on Stress and Immunocompetence
- Conditions
- Health Knowledge, Attitudes, PracticeStress
- Interventions
- Behavioral: Mindfulness meditationBehavioral: Physical exercise
- Registration Number
- NCT03728062
- Lead Sponsor
- Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
- Brief Summary
The objective of this research project is to examine if including mindfulness meditation or physical exercise at lunch break improve workers' recovery from work stress. Therefore, 72 workers included either mindfulness meditation or physical exercise during their lunchbreaks for a month in order to find out if these recovery strategies have more favorable outcomes than usually spent lunch breaks concerning: a) psychological detachment, b) perceived stress, c) general health, d) burnout, e) fatigue, f) quality of sleep, g) cortisol awakening response and h) immunocompetence.
- Detailed Description
The investigators conduct an intervention study in a sample of 72 knowledge-workers, who engaged in mindfulness meditation or physical activities for five weeks. They performed from 15 to 30 minutes during their lunch breaks. The investigators randomly assigned participants to three experimental conditions: 1) mindfulness meditation, 2) physical activity, 3) control group (lunch break as usual). Online questionnaires before and after intervention assessed long term changes regarding recovery processes, perceived stress, health, mindfulness and burnout. For daily changes, a mobile application was developed to assess changes once per day immediately after work. The investigators also collect saliva samples to map cortisol and immunoglobulin A excretion across the intervention period. The investigators had two follow-up measures one and six months after the intervention.
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- COMPLETED
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 72
- Knowledge-workers of an specific company with similar stress level.
- Serious illness
- Regular meditation
- Regular physical exercise
Study & Design
- Study Type
- INTERVENTIONAL
- Study Design
- FACTORIAL
- Arm && Interventions
Group Intervention Description Mindfulness meditation during lunch break Mindfulness meditation Participants performed mindfulness meditation during lunch break at work place for a month, beginning with 15 minutes and ending with 30 minutes. They had available a "quiet room" and mp3 audios with guided meditations based on the MBSR program. Physical exercise during lunch break Physical exercise Participants performed physical exercises during lunch break at a gym for a month, beginning with 15 minutes and ending with 30 minutes. They were instructed to do cardio exercise such as running through a park or going to the gym for running, rowing, cycling or elliptical exercise. 20-140 beats per minute must be reach.
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Spanish version of the Perceived Stress Questionnaire of Levenstein 8 months Validation of the Spanish version of the Perceived Stress Questionnaire of Levenstein et al. (1993). It is a scale to measure stress in psychosomatic disorders. It consists of 30 items, with Likert responses from 1(almost never) to 4 (almost always). The Spanish version has 6 factors: Harrassment-social acceptance, Overload, Irritability-tension-fatigue, Energy-Joy, Fear-anxiety, Self-realization-satisfaction. The higher score, the higher perceived stress.
Recovery Experience Questionnaire (Sonnentag et al., 2007) 8 months Recovery Experience Questionnaire (Sonnentag et al. 2007) is a measure for assessing recuperation from work. It has 16 items divided into four subscales: psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery and control. Each subscale has 4 items. Every items has a 5-point scale from 1 (I do not agree al all) to 5 (I fully agree). Higher scores indicates a higher degree of recovery from work stress.
Spanish version of the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg et al., 1997) 8 months Short version of General Health questionnaire. It has 12 items divided into three subscales: Stress, Coping strategies and Self-steem. Every item has a Likert scale to answer from 0 to 3. Higher scores indicates worse general health.
Salivary Immunoglobulin A 1 months Level changes from Baseline to 1 month follow-up. Samples were collected in Salivettes -trademark- (a plastic tube with a swab) twice a day: in the morning (round 7am) and after work (round 7pm). There were collected two Salivettes every of the three moment of measuring (pretest, postest and 1 month follow-up). That means there were taken 6 tubes for every participant.
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method
Trial Locations
- Locations (1)
Telefonica S.A, Telecom company
🇪🇸Madrid, Spain