Personalized Physical Activity Coaching: A Machine Learning Approach.

Living a sedentary lifestyle is one of the major causes of numerous health problems. To encourage employees to lead a less sedentary life, the Hanze University started a health promotion program. One of the interventions in the program was the use of an activity tracker to record participants' daily step count.

Do activity monitors increase physical activity in adults with overweight or obesity? A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objective: To systematically assess contemporary knowledge regarding behavioral physical activity interventions including an activity monitor (BPAI+) in adults with overweight or obesity.

Methods: PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, CENTRAL, and PEDro were searched for eligible full-text articles up to 1 July 2015. Studies eligible for inclusion were (randomized) controlled trials describing physical activity outcomes in adults with overweight or obesity.

Written pain neuroscience education in fibromyalgia: a multicenter randomized controlled trial.

Mounting evidence supports the use of face-to-face pain neuroscience education for the treatment of chronic pain patients. This study aimed at examining whether written education about pain neuroscience improves illness perceptions, catastrophizing, and health status in patients with fibromyalgia. A double-blind, multicenter randomized controlled clinical trial with 6-month follow-up was conducted.

Do illness perceptions of people with chronic low back pain differ from people without chronic low back pain?

Objectives: To determine why some people develop chronic low back pain, and whether illness perceptions are an important risk factor in the transition from acute to chronic low back pain.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Participants: Four hundred and two members of the general Dutch population, with and without chronic low back pain.

Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater: lessons from the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire.

The Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ) is the most frequently used questionnaire in patients with fibromyalgia in the last 20 years. Recently, a revised version of the FIQ has been published. In this study, we examined the factor structure of the original version using explorative and confirmative factor analyses in a representative group of about 500 Dutch and Belgian patients with fibromyalgia, in which the work-related item was excluded.

How to explain central sensitization to patients with 'unexplained' chronic musculoskeletal pain: practice guidelines.

Central sensitization provides an evidence-based explanation for many cases of 'unexplained' chronic musculoskeletal pain. Prior to commencing rehabilitation in such cases, it is crucial to change maladaptive illness perceptions, to alter maladaptive pain cognitions and to reconceptualise pain. This can be accomplished by patient education about central sensitization and its role in chronic pain, a strategy known as pain physiology education.

Patients with more severe symptoms benefit the most from an intensive multimodal programme in patients with fibromyalgia.

Purpose: Patients with fibromyalgia (FM) experience symptoms over a long period of time impacting their quality of life (QoL). Patients are often treated in multimodal programmes that combine physical and cognitive treatment modalities. Purpose of this study was to identify prognostic factors of effectiveness of a multimodal programme.

Illness perceptions in patients with fibromyalgia and their relationship to quality of life and catastrophizing.

Objective: In the last decade, illness perceptions have been identified as important in the treatment of fibromyalgia (FM). The aim of the present study was to examine illness perceptions and use of the revised Illness Perception Questionnaire in patients with FM (IPQ-R-FM) and their relationship to quality of life and catastrophizing.

Methods: A domain with specific causal attributions related to FM was added to the IPQ-R-FM.

Fear of exercise and health-related quality of life in patients with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator.

Several studies have reported improved survival rates thanks to the use of an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) in the treatment of patients with life-threatening arrhythmia. However, the effects of the ICD on health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) of these patients are not clear. The aim of this study is to describe HR-QoL and fear of exercise in ICD patients.