scholarly journals Biodanza: revisión sistemática sobre los beneficios de una práctica emergente en la promoción de la salud y el bienestar (Biodanza: systematic review of the benefits of an emerging practice in the promotion of health and well-being)

Retos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Altamirano Quevedo ◽  
Estefanía Castillo Viera ◽  
Iván Rodríguez Pascual

  La Biodanza es una disciplina emergente que parece estar relacionada con la salud y el bienestar. Basada en un sistema integrador de disciplinas como la danza, la música y sobre todo la expresión corporal, que permite a los participantes adaptar su nivel inicial y sus capacidades. Para conocer los beneficios que aporta la práctica de biodanza se hace necesario la revisión sistemática de la literatura científica. El objetivo fue realizar una revisión sistemática de la literatura científica sobre biodanza y su relación con la salud. Método: se identificaron los estudios en las bases de datos Web of Science y Scopus hasta enero de 2020. Se seleccionaron las investigaciones de diseño cuantitativo, publicadas en inglés o castellano. Tras el cribado, se identificaron nueve artículos que cumplían los criterios de inclusión. Resultados: la biodanza muestra resultados positivos sobre la salud de mujeres con fibromialgia, así como en población general y niños. Las variables analizadas fundamentalmente fueron depresión, ansiedad, calidad del sueño, manejo del dolor, o inteligencia emocional. Conclusiones: los estudios muestran una relación positiva entre los practicantes de biodanza y algunos parámetros de salud, especialmente variables referidas al bienestar, así como una clara utilidad en el trabajo comunitario y la promoción de la salud. Los estudios son escasos y las muestras no son aleatorias, por lo que no se pueden generalizar fácilmente los resultados. Abstract. Biodanza is an emerging discipline apparently related to health and well-being. It is based on an system integrating disciplines such as dance, music, and, particularly, body expression, which allows participants to adapt their initial level and abilities. In order to know the benefits of the practice of biodanza, it is necessary to systematically review the scientific literature related to it. Objective: this article aims to systematically review the benefits of biodanza on health. Method: the studies were identified in the databases until December 2018. Quantitative design research, published both in English and Spanish, were selected. Nine articles meeting the inclusion criteria were identified. Results: biodanza shows positive results on the health of women with fibromyalgia, as well as in the general population and children. Depression, anxiety, quality of sleep, or emotional intelligence were among the health variables analyzed. Conclusions: the studies show a positive relationship between biodanza practitioners and some health parameters, especially wellbeing variables. Biodanza seems to have also a clear utility in community work and health promotion. The studies are still scarce and the samples are not random, so the results cannot be easily generalized.

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 405-422
Author(s):  
MG Figueiro ◽  
HC Kales

Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias is the collective term for a progressive neurodegenerative disease for which there is presently no cure. This paper focuses on two symptoms of the disease, sleep disturbances and depression, and discusses how light can be used as a non-pharmacological intervention to mitigate their negative effects. Bright days and dark nights are needed for health and well-being, but the present components of the built environment, especially those places where older adults spend most of their days, are too dimly illuminated during the day and too bright at night. To be effective light needs to be correctly specified, implemented and measured. Yet, without the appropriate specification and measurement of the stimulus, researchers will not be able to successfully demonstrate positive results in the field, nor will lighting designers and specifiers have the confidence to implement lighting solutions for promoting better sleep and mood in this population.


Author(s):  
Malene Friis Andersen ◽  
Karina Nielsen ◽  
Jeppe Zielinski Nguyen Ajslev

There is a growing interest in organizational interventions (OI) aiming to increase employees’ well-being. An OI involves changes in the way work is designed, organized, and managed. Studies have shown that an OI’s positive results are increased if there is a good fit between context and intervention and between participant and intervention. In this article, we propose that a third fit—the Relational Fit (R-Fit)—also plays an important role in determining an intervention’s outcome. The R-Fit consists of factors related to 1) the employees participating in the OI, 2) the intervention facilitator, and 3) the quality of the relation between participants and the intervention facilitator. The concept of the R-Fit is inspired by research in psychotherapy documenting that participant factors, therapist factors, and the quality of the relations explain 40% of the effect of an intervention. We call attention to the importance of systematically evaluating and improving the R-Fit in OIs. This is important to enhance the positive outcomes in OIs and thereby increase both the well-being and productivity of employees. We introduce concrete measures that can be used to study and evaluate the R-Fit. This article is the first to combine knowledge from research in psychotherapy with research on OIs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 515-522
Author(s):  
P Raynham

Electric light in buildings may provide some health benefits; however, for most people these benefits are likely to be small. It is possible for electric lighting to cause health problems, if there is too little light or there is glare, but for the most part there is good guidance available and these problems can be avoided. The quality of the lit environment can have a psychological impact and this may in turn impact well-being. A starting point for this is perceived adequacy of illumination. Related lighting metrics are examined and a hypothetical explanation is suggested.


Author(s):  
Susan E. Peters ◽  
Glorian Sorensen ◽  
Jeffrey N. Katz ◽  
Daniel A. Gundersen ◽  
Gregory R. Wagner

Work is a major contributor to our health and well-being. Workers’ thriving is directly influenced by their job design, work environment and organization. The purpose of this report is to describe the qualitative methods used to develop the candidate items for a novel measure of Thriving from Work through a multi-step iterative process including: a literature review, workshop, interviews with experts, and cognitive testing of the candidate items. Through this process, we defined Thriving from Work as the state of positive mental, physical, and social functioning in which workers’ experiences of their work and working conditions enable them to thrive in their overall lives, contributing to their ability to achieve their full potential in their work, home, and community. Thriving from Work was conceptualized into 37 attributes across seven dimensions: psychological, emotional, social, work–life integration, basic needs, experience of work, and health. We ultimately identified, developed and/or modified 87 candidate questionnaire items mapped to these attributes that performed well in cognitive testing in demographically and occupationally diverse workers. The Thriving from Work Questionnaire will be subjected to psychometric testing and item reduction in future studies. Individual items demonstrated face validity and good cognitive response properties and may be used independently from the questionnaire.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 517
Author(s):  
Ilia Adami ◽  
Michalis Foukarakis ◽  
Stavroula Ntoa ◽  
Nikolaos Partarakis ◽  
Nikolaos Stefanakis ◽  
...  

Improving the well-being and quality of life of the elderly population is closely related to assisting them to effectively manage age-related conditions such as chronic illnesses and anxiety, and to maintain their independence and self-sufficiency as much as possible. This paper presents the design, architecture and implementation structure of an adaptive system for monitoring the health and well-being of the elderly. The system was designed following best practices of the Human-Centred Design approach involving representative end-users from the early stages.


Author(s):  
Ieva Ančevska

The article examines the depiction of gratitude and related events in Latvian folklore through comparative evaluation. Gratitude is considered in a psychological context, comparing the attitude expressed in folklore with the findings of modern scientific research. Gratitude is a concept that is usually associated with a relationship or a benefit, it is most often aimed outwards, dedicated to someone else, but at the same time, it creates a pleasant feeling within the person. In modern psychology, gratitude is receiving more and more attention from researchers because its manifestations stimulate the formation of positive emotions and contribute to the improvement of the person’s overall well-being. Research and clinical studies in psychotherapy confirm that gratitude plays an important role in improving mental health and reducing depressive, destructive feelings. In turn, neuroscience research shows the potential of a grateful and positive attitude in strengthening psycho-emotional health and well-being in general. In Latvian folklore, gratitude is depicted as an important part of ritual events, which helps to ensure a positive, balanced connection with the forces of nature, gods, and society. In folklore, the importance of gratitude is emphasised more when building family relationships or accepting various situations and occurrences in life. In both psychological research and the practice of systemic therapy, as well as in folklore, gratitude appears as one of the most important values of interpersonal connection, which promotes the formation of harmonious relationships. Similar to the opinions of psychology, the folk world views emphasise the motivational role of gratitude in improving the quality of human life and health in general.


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-9
Author(s):  
Tatyana N. Ananyeva ◽  
Galina I. Ilyukhina ◽  
Yulia V. Sazonova

Human health and well-being largely depend on a sufficient standard of living, educational opportunities and participation in social and social life, and successful professional activities. It should be recognized that in the surrounding society it is in these areas of life that people with disabilities and disabilities are especially disadvantaged, but not neglected by society and the state. Currently, in the Russian Federation, the State programme Accessible Environment is being implemented to support and assist persons with disabilities and disabilities, with the aim of creating legal, economic and institutional conditions conducive to the integration of persons with disabilities into society and improving their quality of life. The programme contains three subprogrammes that are effectively implemented in modern society, namely: (1) Ensuring the accessibility of priority facilities and services in priority areas of life of persons with disabilities and other mobile populations; (2) Improvement of the system of comprehensive rehabilitation and habilitation of persons with disabilities; (3) Improvement of the state system of medical and social expertise. The organizers of the Abilimpix social movement were able to demonstrate to people with disabilities their individual capabilities and prospects for accessibility to all types, forms and means of obtaining knowledge and professional skills, their effective application in practice.


Author(s):  
José Bringel Filho ◽  
Nazim Agoulmine

Ubiquitous Health (U-Health) smart homes are intelligent spaces capable of observing and correctly recognizing the activities and health statuses of their inhabitants (context) to provide the appropriate support to achieve an overall sense of health and well-being in their inhabitants’ daily lives. With the intrinsic heterogeneity and large number of sources of context information, aggregating and reasoning on low-quality raw sensed data may result in conflicting and erroneous evaluations of situations, affecting directly the reliability of the U-Health systems. In this environment, the evaluation and verification of Quality of Context (QoC) information plays a central role in improving the consistency and correctness of context-aware U-Health applications. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to highlight the impact of QoC on the correct behavior of U-Health systems, and introduce and analyze the existing approaches of modeling, evaluating, and using QoC to improve its context-aware decision-making support.


Author(s):  
James R. Fleming

The debate over climate change, both from natural causes and human activity, is not new. Although the Baron C.-L. de Montesquieu is undoubtedly the best known Enlightenment thinker on the topic of climatic determinism, others, notably the Abbé Du Bos, David Hume, and Thomas Jefferson, observed that climatic changes exerted a direct influence on individuals and society and that human agency was directly involved in changing the climate. Climate—from the Greek term klima, meaning slope or inclination—was originally thought to depend only on the height of the Sun above the horizon, a function of the latitude. A second tradition, traceable to Aristotle, linked the quality of the air (and thus the climate) to the vapors and exhalations of a country. The Hippocratic tradition further linked climate to health and national character. As late as 1779, the Encyclopdédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert defined “climat” geographically, as a “portion or zone of the surface of the Earth, enclosed within two circles parallel to the equator,” in which the longest day of the year differs in length on its northern and southern boundaries by some quantity of time, for example one-half hour. The article goes on to mention Montesquieu’s position on “l’influence du climat sur les mœurs, le charactère, et les loix des peuples.” The second definition of climate provided by the Encyclopdédie was medical, identified primarily as the temperature of a region and explicated through its effects on the health and well-being of the inhabitants. The idea that climate influenced culture was derived in part from the writings of ancient and medieval philosophers, geographers, and historians, including the works of Hippocrates, Albertus Magnus, and Jean Bodin. With no established science of climatology, Enlightenment thinkers apprehended climate and its changes primarily in a literary way. They compared the ancient writings to recent weather conditions, linked the rise and fall of creative historical eras to changes in climate, and promoted a brand of climatic determinism based on geographic location and the quality of the air.


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