Combining walking and relaxation for stress reduction—A randomized cross‐over trial in healthy adults

Abstract

Both physical activity and relaxation have stress-relieving potential. This study investigates their combined impact on the relaxation response while considering participants' initial stress level. In a randomized cross-over trial, 81 healthy adults completed 4 types of short-term interventions for stress reduction, each lasting for 1 hr: (1) physical activity (walking) combined with resting, (2) walking combined with balneotherapy, (3) combined resting and balneotherapy, and (4) resting only. Saliva cortisol, blood pressure, state of mood, and relaxation were measured preintervention and postintervention. Stress levels were determined by validated questionnaires. All interventions were associated with relaxation responses in the variables saliva cortisol, blood pressure, state of mood, and subjective relaxation. No significant differences were found regarding the reduction of salivary cortisol (F = 1.30; p = .281). The systolic blood pressure was reduced best when walking was combined with balneotherapy or resting (F = 7.34; p < .001). Participants with high stress levels (n = 25) felt more alert after interventions including balneotherapy, whereas they reported an increase of tiredness when walking was combined with resting (F = 3.20; p = .044). Results suggest that combining physical activity and relaxation (resting or balneotherapy) is an advantageous short-term strategy for stress reduction as systolic blood pressure is reduced best while similar levels of relaxation can be obtained.

Evaluating the Methodological Quality of Postexercise Hypotension Aerobic Exercise Interventions

“…We systematically searched six different databases following PRISMA guidelines. The development of the PEH √ list is based on our (Pescatello et al, 1991(Pescatello et al, , 2004(Pescatello et al, , 2007(Pescatello et al, , 2016Keese et al, 2011;Ash et al, 2013;Headley et al, 2017;Cordeiro et al, 2018;Cilhoroz et al, 2019;Zaleski et al, 2019;Babcock et al, 2020;Farinatti et al, 2021) and others (Hacke et al, 2018;de Brito et al, 2019) long history of performing well-controlled PEH studies (Guadagnoli and Velicer, 1988;Pescatello et al, 1991Pescatello et al, , 2003Pescatello et al, , 2004Pescatello et al, , 2015aPescatello et al, , 2017Pescatello et al, , 2019Thomas et al, 2006;Moher et al, 2009;Casonatto et al, 2011;Johnson et al, 2014;Matzer et al, 2017) as well as the methodological study quality standards of the Cochrane risk of bias tool (Higgins et al, 2011) and Downs and Black checklist for methodological quality (Downs and Black, 1998). The PEH √ list is comprehensive addressing essential study design considerations.…”

Comparison of rest‐break interventions during a mentally demanding task

“…Future studies should extend the present findings to nonacademic contexts; modify the used rest‐break activities by, for example, using different relaxation strategies or physical exercises; include other rest‐break activities, such as brief mindfulness exercises (Tang et al, ) or a combination of rest‐break activities (Matzer, Nagele, Lerch, Vajda, & Fazekas, ); and use additional outcome measures, especially physiological or performance related variables, as a reduction of fatigue through physical activity is not necessarily related to an improvement of performance (Watling et al, ).…”

The Unease Modulation Model: An Experiential Model of Stress With Implications for Health, Stress Management, and Public Policy

“…These internal processes cause physical changes that accumulate over time and have been defined by researchers as “allostatic load,” or the wear and tear on the body (12). Colloquially, stress is treated with stress reduction, with methods including mindfulness, yoga, biofeedback, hypnosis, music, exercise, writing, and pass/fail grading (13–17). The benefits of these methods are limited and difficult to correlate with proposed mechanisms (18, 19).…”