Eli Puterman

University of British Columbia - Vancouver | UBC · School of Kinesiology

A growing body of research is exploring the potential added health benefits of exercise when performed outdoors in nature versus indoors. This systematic review aimed to compare the effects of exercise in outdoor environments versus indoor environments on psychological health, physical health, and physical activity behaviour. We searched nine datab...

A growing body of research is exploring the potential added health benefits of exercise when it is performed outdoors in nature, as compared with indoors. We systematically reviewed longitudinal trials comparing the effects of exercise in outdoor versus indoor environments on psychological and physical health, and exercise behaviour. We searched th...

Background Previous research suggests that there is a bidirectional relationship between incidental affect (i.e., how people feel in day-to-day life) and physical activity behavior. However, many inconsistencies exist in the body of work due to the lag interval between affect and physical activity measurements. Purpose Using a novel continuous-tim...

Objective The goal of this study was to examine how variability in interparental relationship functioning predicts the quality of parent–child interactions in daily life among families in which a child had autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and families of neurotypical children. Background Parent–child interactions predict a host of key outcomes for...

Mitochondria contain their own genome that can be released in multiple biofluids such as blood and cerebrospinal fluid, as cell-free mitochondrial DNA (cf-mtDNA). In clinical studies, blood cf-mtDNA predict mortality and higher cf-mtDNA levels are associated with mental and physical stress. However, the dynamics of cf-mtDNA has not been defined, an...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s42761-022-00112-x.].

To decrease the spread of the COVID-19 virus, public health officials in British Columbia, Canada ordered large-scale physical distancing requirements, leading to school and business closures, banning of large gatherings, and travel restrictions. These requirements shifted people’s occupational repertoires, with vulnerable populations (e.g., those...

Sleep is an important process that can influence and be influenced by daily events and emotions. We examined the bidirectional relationships between sleep, daily events, and emotions with a daily diary method completed by 181 mothers (M age = 41.91, SD = 5.06). They answered morning and evening questionnaires for 1 week at three different points in...

With an increasing number of children attending regular early childhood education and care (ECEC), this setting presents an opportunity to develop physical activity habits and movement skills of children. These behaviours play an important role in the development and well-being of children. In 2017, an Active Play Standard was introduced in British...

Background Exposure to chronic psychological stress across multiple life domains (multi-domain chronic burden) is associated with poor health. This may be because multi-domain chronic burden influences daily-level emotional processes, though this hypothesis has not been thoroughly tested. Purpose The current study tested whether (a) multi-domain c...

Understanding perceptions of safety and comfort (PSC) while walking or cycling is essential to accommodating and encouraging active travel, but current measures of PSC, primarily surveys, suffer from validity and reliability issues. Physiological markers of stress like electrodermal activity and heart rate variability have been proposed as alternat...

Physical activity behaviour displays temporal variability, and is influenced by a range of dynamic psychological processes (e.g., affect) and shaped by various co-occurring events (e.g., social/environmental factors, interpersonal dynamics). Yet, most physical activity research tends not to examine the dynamic psychological processes implicated in...

Background The number of adults across the globe with significant depressive symptoms has grown substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The extant literature supports exercise as a potent behaviour that can significantly reduce depressive symptoms in clinical and non-clinical populations. Objective Using a suite of mobile applications, at-home...

Background: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, experts in mental health science emphasized the importance of developing and evaluating approaches to support and maintain the mental health of older adults. Objective: To assess whether a group-based exercise program relative to a personal exercise program (both delivered online) and wait-list c...

Objective The aim of this experimental study was to determine the extent to which the intensity of a single 30-minute bout of exercise alters the salivary cortisol (sCort) response to a subsequently induced acute psychosocial stressor. The study further aimed to elucidate a physiological mechanism through which exercise intensity exerts stress-miti...

BACKGROUND In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, experts in mental health science emphasized the importance of developing and evaluating approaches to support and maintain the mental health of older adults. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess whether a group-based exercise program relative to a personal exercise program (both delivered o...

Background: The number of adults across the globe with significant depressive symptoms has grown substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The extant literature supports exercise as a potent behavior that can significantly reduce depressive symptoms in clinical and non-clinical populations. Objective: Using a suite of mobile applications, at-home...

Background. Childhood trauma (CT) increases the risk of adult depression. Buffering effects require an understanding of the underlying persistent risk pathways. This study examined whether daily psychological stress processes – how an individual interprets and affectively responds to minor everyday events – mediate the effect of CT on adult depress...

Objective: To examine the psychological mediators of exercise adherence among older adults in a group-based physical activity randomized controlled trial. Method: Older adults (≥65 years) were randomized to one of three conditions as part of the "GrOup-based physical Activity for oLder adults" (GOAL) randomized controlled trial. These included s...

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of a 24-week aerobic exercise training program on daily psychological processes and occurrence of stressors in a group of previously physically underactive family caregivers of patients with dementia. As part of the Fitness, Aging, and STress (FAST) randomized controlled trial, 68 participants (F = 5...

Background Studies examining risk factors for dementia have typically focused on testing a priori hypotheses within specific risk factor domains, leaving unanswered the question of what risk factors across broad and diverse research fields may be most important to predicting dementia. We examined the relative importance of 65 sociodemographic, earl...

The early years are critical for physical literacy (PL) and physical activity (PA). With increasing numbers of children attending early childhood education and care (ECEC), educators play a significant role in childhood development and may influence young children’s PL journey. Educators receive minimal training in PL and PA, but receive increasing...

Significance In our prospective study using nationally representative data from 13,611 adults in the US Health and Retirement Study, we used traditional and machine-learning statistical approaches to reveal the most important factors across the behavioral and social sciences that predict mortality in older adults. In the study, we found that top pr...

We conducted a prospective analysis of incident dementia and its association with 65 sociodemographic, early-life, economic, health and behavioral, social, and genetic risk factors in a sample of 7,908 adults over the age of 50 from the nationally representative US-based Health and Retirement Study. We used traditional survival analysis methods (Fi...

Background The responsibility and stress of being a family caregiver are associated with reduced physical and mental health. Purpose To examine whether a 24-week aerobic exercise program improves multiple aspects of psychological functioning in family caregivers. Methods Family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias (...

Leukocyte telomere length, a marker of immune system function, is sensitive to exposures such as psychosocial stressors and health-maintaining behaviors. Past research has determined that stress experienced in adulthood is associated with shorter telomere length, but is limited to mostly cross-sectional reports. We test whether repeated reports of...

Background: To examine the extent to which group-based exercise programs, informed by self-categorisation theory, result in improvements in psychological flourishing and reductions in age- and gender-related stigma consciousness among older adults. Methods: In the study, older adults (N = 485, ≥ 65 years) were randomised to similar age same gend...

Objective: Telomeres are protective sequences of DNA capping the ends of chromosomes that shorten over time. Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is posited to reflect the replicative history of cells and general systemic aging of the organism. Chronic stress exposure leads to accelerated LTL shortening, which has been linked to increased susceptibilit...

77th Annual Scientific Meeting, March 6–9, 2019. Vancouver, BC, Canada

Background: Stress exposure occurring across the lifespan increases risk for disease, potentially involving telomere length shortening. Stress exposure during childhood and adulthood has been cross-sectionally linked with shorter telomere length. However, few longitudinal studies have examined telomere length attrition over time, and none have inv...

Background: Chronic caregiving stress may accelerate biological aging; however, the ability to integrate the meaning of caregiving through self-awareness, adaptation, and growth can buffer the negative effects of stress. Narrative researchers have shown that people who coherently integrate difficult experiences into their life story tend to have b...

Objectives: The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was designed as an interdisciplinary study with a strong focus on health, retirement, and socioeconomic environment, to study their dynamic relationships over time in a sample of mid-life adults. The study includes validated self-report measures and individual items that capture the experiences of...

Chronic psychological stress is associated with accelerated biological aging, immune dysfunction, and premature morbidity and mortality. Changes in the relative proportions of T cell subpopulations are thought to be a characteristic of immunological aging; however, understanding of whether these changes are associated with chronic psychological str...

The chronic psychological stress of caregiving leads to higher risks for many diseases. One of the mechanisms through which caregiving is associated with disease risk is chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation may accelerate cellular aging via telomere dysfunction and cell senescence, although this has not been examined in human cells from healt...

Background: Despite the health benefits of regular physical activity, across the globe older adults represent the least active section of society. Purpose: The GrOup-based physical Activity for oLder adults (GOAL) trial was a three-arm parallel randomized controlled trial (RCT) that was designed to test the efficacy of two group-based exercise p...

Stress can influence health throughout the lifespan, yet there is little agreement about what types and aspects of stress matter most for human health and disease. This is in part because "stress" is not a monolithic concept but rather, an emergent process that involves interactions between individual and environmental factors, historical and curre...

Purpose: Comfort eating is a prevalent behavior. Prior research shows that comfort eating is associated with reduced stress responses and increased metabolic risk across adolescence, young adulthood, and middle adulthood. The purpose of the current research was to test if comfort eating prospectively predicted all-cause mortality in older adulthoo...

Plasminogen activator inhibitor–1 (PAI-1) has been shown to be a key component of the senescence-related secretome and a direct mediator of cellular senescence. In murine models of accelerated aging, genetic deficiency and targeted inhibition of PAI-1 protect against aging-like pathology and prolong life span. However, the role of PAI-1 in human lo...

Background: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is thought to promote biological aging, which might lead to cardiovascular and aging-related complications. This large-scale study investigated longitudinal relationships between MetS, its components, and cellular aging markers: leukocyte mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) and telomere length (TL). Metho...

Objective: The results from experimental studies indicate that physically active individuals remain calmer and report less anxiety after the induction of a standardized stressor. The current study extends this research to real life, and examines whether daily physical activity attenuates negative affect that occurs in response to naturally occurri...

People who are more accepting of their thoughts and feelings experience fewer negative emotions. Although several studies document the connection between acceptance and negative emotions, little, if any research, sheds light on how being receptive to one's internal experience results in less negativity in everyday life. In a daily diary study (N =...

Objective: We examined effects of daily rumination and suppression in response to stressors on objective and subjective sleep among mothers. Design: Participants were 183 mothers, including chronically stressed mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder (M-ASD; n = 92) and age-matched mothers of neurotypical children (M-NT; n = 91). In an...

High-quality relationships have been shown to be beneficial for physical and mental health. This study examined overall relationship satisfaction and perceived stress as well as daily reports of partner support, partner conflict, and physical intimacy obtained over the course of one week in a sample of 129 high and low stress mothers. Telomere leng...

Background and objectives: Although it has been postulated that psychological responses to stress in adulthood are grounded in childhood experiences in the family environment, evidence has been inconsistent. This study tested whether two putative measures of neurobiological sensitivity (vagal flexibility and attentional capacity) moderated the rel...

Significance The gradual aging of the immune system is partly marked by shortened telomeres, the DNA–protein caps at the ends of chromosomes that protect genes from degradation. This study undertakes a lifespan approach to stress and leukocyte telomere length in a nationally representative sample of US residents. By using data from 16 y of the Heal...

Background: Chronic psychological stress is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and mortality. Circulating hematopoietic progenitor cells (CPCs) maintain vascular homeostasis, correlate with preclinical atherosclerosis, and prospectively predict cardiovascular events. We hypothesize that 1) chronic caregiving stress is related to reduced CPC...

Meditation is becoming increasingly practiced, especially for stress-related medical conditions. Meditation may improve cellular health; however, studies have not separated out effects of meditation from vacation-like effects in a residential randomized controlled trial. We recruited healthy women non-meditators to live at a resort for 6 days and r...

Objective: Despite variability in the burden of elevated depressive symptoms by sex and race and differences in the incidence of metabolic syndrome, few prior studies describe the longitudinal association of depressive symptoms with metabolic syndrome in a diverse cohort. We tested whether baseline and time-varying depressive symptoms were associa...

Men who have sex with men (MSM) represent almost half of new HIV infections in Canada each year. However, the vast majority of research on HIV testing among MSM has been conducted in major urban centres. The present study addressed this gap by investigating HIV testing behaviour and predictors of HIV testing among MSM living outside major urban cen...

Telomeres, the protective DNA-protein complexes at the ends of linear chromosomes, are important for genome stability. Leukocyte or peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) telomere length is a potential biomarker for human aging that integrates genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors and is associated with mortality and risks for major disea...

Table S1 provides the means and SD's of telomere length and telomerase activity for the 39 subjects with longitudinal telomere length data (N=39). Table S2 provides the means and SD's of telomere length and telomerase activity of the entire cohort at base visit. Table S3 compares telomere length of different cell types from the same individual at b...

Objectives: Chronic exposure to psychosocial stressors is related to worse somatic health. This association applies both to stressors early in life, such as childhood adversities, and more recent life stress, such as stressful life events. This study examined whether accelerated telomere shortening, as an indicator of cellular aging, might be an e...

Long-term psychological stress is associated with BMI increases in children as they transition to adulthood, whereas long-term maintenance of physical activity can slow excess weight gain. We hypothesized that in addition to these main effects, long-term physical activity mitigates the relationship between long-term stress and BMI increase. The NHL...

Telomere length, a reliable predictor of disease pathogenesis, can be affected by genetics, chronic stress and health behaviors. Cross-sectionally, highly stressed postmenopausal women have shorter telomeres, but only if they are inactive. However, no studies have prospectively examined telomere length change over a short period, and if rate of att...

Objective: To identify psychosocial factors associated with sedentary behavior, we tested whether perceived discrimination is associated with sedentary behavior. Methods: Black and white men and women (N = 3270) from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study reported experiences of discrimination and time engaged in total...

Introduction: Obesity is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease. Adolescence is a period when behavior changes consolidate, setting a trajectory towards obesity. Both poor health behaviors and psychological stress promote obesity. Studies have shown that ongoing stress is related to weight gain while maintaining physical activity mitigates obesi...

Social connections moderate the effects of high negative affect on health. Affective states (anger, fear, and anxiety) predict interleukin-6 (IL-6) reactivity to acute stress; in turn, this reactivity predicts risk of cardiovascular disease progression. Here, we examined whether perceived social support mitigates the relationship between negative a...

Greater levels of socioeconomic position (SEP) are generally associated with better health. However results from previous studies vary across race/ethnicity and health outcomes. Further, the majority of previous studies do not account for the effects of life course SEP on health nor the effects of racial discrimination, which could moderate the eff...

Sleep disturbance is a key behavioral risk factor for chronic medical conditions observed at high rates among overweight and obese individuals. Systemic inflammation, including that induced by stress, may serve as a common biological mechanism linking sleep, adiposity, and disease risk. To investigate these relationships, 48 postmenopausal women (m...

Major depressive disorder has been associated with reduced leukocyte telomere length (LTL). It is not known, however, whether psychosocial and behavioral protective factors moderate this association. In the current study, we examine whether multisystem resiliency - defined by