What if your doctor told you that with one one magic pill each day you could prevent or reduce the effects of 35 chronic diseases? Would you take it?
Dr. Said Mekari, Director of Research at Université de Moncton’s Medical Training Centre and Professor of Family Medicine at the Universite’ de Sherbrooke, says that solution already exists, but researchers and healthcare professionals haven’t yet figured out how to get people to swallow it.
The prescription is simple: physical activity for about 150 minutes a week. Yet getting people to commit to it has proved a persistent challenge for physicians, educators, and policy makers.
Dr. Mekari is determined to find ways to shift attitudes and behavior concerning exercise so that more people will modify their lifestyle and stay healthy throughout their lifespan.
A 3D view of exercise and health
At his Impact Lab in Sherbrooke, Mekari and his colleagues are studying the relationship between lifestyle and health using what they call the 3Ds: Describe, Discover, and Deploy.
Describe involves examining how physical activity is taking place (or not) at the population level. The broad view is critical because individuals are greatly influenced by their environment.
Says Dr. Mekari, “You can't tell a person to move and then they'll move. People will move when the environment, when the context is right for them to move.”
Discover involves investigating why exercise has such positive effects. For example, we know that exercise improves both cardiovascular and cognitive functioning, but science hasn’t yet explained how these two benefits are linked. Dr. Mekari and his team are currently exploring the physiological mechanisms connecting heart health with brain health.
Deploy involves working with community groups to implement research insights.
Explains Dr. Mekari, “Physical activity has always been known to improve chronic disease, but we want to try to understand the why behind all this, and once we understand the why, it's to invest it in our communities.”
Investing in community interventions
Dr. Mekari sums up the main message of “lifestyle medicine” with the mantra “Move, move, move.”
“It doesn’t matter what you do,” he says. “Get out. Move. Do anything. It will help.”
And he’s quick to point out that this isn’t something individuals are likely to do on their own. They need community support, or what he calls “community interventions.” These include, for example, programs and infrastructure that make physical activity accessible, educational opportunities, and changes in public policy.
This population-level approach is particularly important for the province’s francophones who to exercise less and eat less well than their anglophone counterparts. Dr. Mekari’s Impact Lab is currently running pilot programs in Edmundston and Memramcook.
These programs have been co-created with the community to meet their specific needs. When researchers ask communities how they move, and how they’d like to move, they can co-design sustainable interventions that keep people active over the long term.
The life-altering impact of co-creation is what motivates Dr. Mekari to continue with his multidimensional research.
He says, “physical activity and lifestyle habits can change people's lives. And for me, that's worth more than any publication.”
