RESUMO
Individuals with disabilities face psychological, environmental, and resource-related barriers to participating in exercise and sports. The lack of participation in exercise observed in the disability community poses great concern to this population's health. This review discusses commercially available adaptive equipment and technology for exercise and sports that help people with disabilities circumvent barriers to exercise. The methods section highlights various categories of adaptive tools and their cost, accessibility, ease of learning, and progress level to help people with disabilities determine points of entry to fitness that align with their needs. Additionally, fitness-related businesses, fitness device developers, and researchers can leverage the discussed findings to understand gaps in this field to further advance adaptive equipment and technology and help facilitate widespread use. The paper serves as a comprehensive resource to researchers, entrepreneurs, and consumers to guide developing, accessing, and marketing adaptive exercise technology.
A majority of people with disabilities experience barriers to participating in exercise and sports which can drastically affect their physical and mental well-being.Although there are commercially available adaptive equipment and technologies for exercise and sports, limited accessibility, cost, and lack of options for various disabilities can hinder participation in physical activities.There are many developments needed in terms of technology and programs that can address issues faced by the disability community regarding exercise and sports participation.
RESUMO
Background: Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) provides a non-invasive, cost-effective method for assessing skeletal muscle oxidative capacity when combined with a short exercise protocol and arterial occlusions. However, the impact of different exercise protocols and reproducibility of the method in non-athletic adults have not previously been assessed. Methods: Young, non-athletic adults (YA) were invited to perform a short duration, fast frequency contraction (SF) exercise protocol and a long duration slow frequency (LS) contraction protocol, combined with NIRS measurements and arterial occlusions to assess skeletal muscle oxidative capacity. YA and older non-athletic adults (OA; >65 years old) were invited to perform the SF exercise protocol twice to assess the reproducibility of this oxidative capacity measurement. Results: We included 25 participants (14 male (56%), age range: 18-86 years) in the analyses. There was a strong positive correlation and good agreement between time constants derived following the SF and LS exercise protocols (Lin's concordance correlation coefficient: 0.69, p-value < 0.001 mean bias [LoA]: -3.2 [-31.0, 24.4] seconds. There was a strong positive correlation and good agreement between time constants derived from the SF exercise protocol in the YA & OA group (Lin's concordance correlation coefficient: 0.63, p-value < 0.001; mean bias [LoA] -6.4 [-34.0, 21.3] seconds). Conclusion: These data provide evidence to suggest that NIRS is a reliable in vivo method for the assessment of skeletal muscle oxidative capacity irrespective of exercise protocol duration or muscle contraction frequency. NIRS-measured oxidative capacity via the SF exercise protocol was reproducible in non-athletic adults with a wide range in age.
RESUMO
The pathogenesis of exercise intolerance and persistent fatigue which can follow an infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus ("long COVID") is not fully understood. Cases were recruited from a long COVID clinic (N = 32; 44 ± 12 years; 10 (31%) men), and age-/sex-matched healthy controls (HC) (N = 19; 40 ± 13 years; 6 (32%) men) from University College London staff and students. We assessed exercise performance, lung and cardiac function, vascular health, skeletal muscle oxidative capacity, and autonomic nervous system (ANS) function. Key outcome measures for each physiological system were compared between groups using potential outcome means (95% confidence intervals) adjusted for potential confounders. Long COVID participant outcomes were compared to normative values. When compared to HC, cases exhibited reduced oxygen uptake efficiency slope (1847 (1679, 2016) vs. 2176 (1978, 2373) mL/min, p = 0.002) and anaerobic threshold (13.2 (12.2, 14.3) vs. 15.6 (14.4, 17.2) mL/kg/min, p < 0.001), and lower oxidative capacity, measured using near infrared spectroscopy (τ: 38.7 (31.9, 45.6) vs. 24.6 (19.1, 30.1) s, p = 0.001). In cases, ANS measures fell below normal limits in 39%. Long COVID is associated with reduced measures of exercise performance and skeletal muscle oxidative capacity in the absence of evidence of microvascular dysfunction, suggesting mitochondrial pathology. There was evidence of attendant ANS dysregulation in a significant proportion. These multisystem factors might contribute to impaired exercise tolerance in long COVID sufferers.