Lifestyle exercises for bone health and health-related quality of life among premenopausal women: a randomised controlled trial

PURPOSE: Growing evidence supports engagement in physical exercise throughout life for optimal bone health. However, promotion of physical exercise among premenopausal women presents significant challenges, which are yet to be addressed in the design of many bone-health exercise regimes. As a deviation from traditional, facility-based, supervised, long-duration and intense exercise regimes, the efficacy of short-duration, practical, lifestyle physical exercises for improving bone health and quality of life was examined. METHODS: Premenopausal women (N = 96, mean age 22.25 ± 3.5 years; mean BMI 23.43 ± 3.5 kg/m(2)) participated in a 6-month randomised trial of lifestyle physical exercises for the intervention group and sham exercises for the control group. The participants' scores on the outcome measure SF-36 was accessed pre- and post-intervention and compared with general population norms according to the SF-36 scoring manual. Paired t-tests were used to examine changes within trial arms from baseline to post-intervention, while analysis of covariance was performed to examine the effect of the lifestyle exercise programme on quality of life of premenopausal women. RESULTS: Compared to 51% at baseline, 63% of the participants were either at or above the general population norm for general health, and the percentage of participants who were below the population health norm for mental health was reduced from 46% at baseline to 38% post-exercise intervention. Comparable improvements in quality of life were found in both trial arms post-participation in the bone-health promotion programme. CONCLUSIONS: Bone-health exercises, when implemented as easily adoptable, lifestyle physical activity, may also enhance the quality of life of premenopausal women. Hence, a practical lifestyle approach to exercise may offer a much-needed public health strategy for bone-health promotion among women.