Jairo H Migueles

• Master of research in Physical Activity and Sport
• PhD Student at University of Granada

Objective This cross-sectional study examined associations between 24-hour time-use composition (i.e. sleep, sedentary time, light physical activity and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity) and cognitive performance and explored whether demographic or genetic factors moderated these relationships. Methods This analysis included baseline data fr...

The current study aims to detect walking trips to/from school with different methodologies (GPS, self-reported, fixed windows [w30 and w60], and distance-based time), and to compare the start/end times for the trips, and the time accumulated in sedentary time, light physical activity (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). A total...

Objectives To investigate the association of sleep‐disordered breathing (SDB) severity with cardiometabolic and inflammatory markers independently of the adiposity levels; and to explore the role of cardiorespiratory fitness in these associations in children with overweight/obesity. Methods A total of 109 children aged 8–11 years with overweight/o...

The optimal eating window for time-restricted eating (TRE) remains unclear, particularly its impact on visceral adipose tissue (VAT), which is associated with cardiometabolic morbidity and mortality. We investigated the effects of three TRE schedules (8 h windows in the early day, late day and participant-chosen times) combined with usual care (UC,...

Increasing physical activity (PA) is recognised as an efficacious approach for preventing and treating cardiometabolic diseases. Recently, the composition of microorganisms living within the gut has been proposed as an important appropriate target for treating these diseases. Whether PA is related to faecal microbiota diversity and composition in h...

Background A shift from self-reports to wearable sensors for global physical activity (PA) surveillance has been recommended. The conventional use of a generic cut-point to assess moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) is problematic as these cut-points are often derived from non-representative samples under non-ecological laboratory conditions. This study...

This chapter explores the critical domain of assessing physical activity (PA) in the dynamic context of children and adolescents. Understanding and accurately measuring PA are paramount, as is comprehensive knowledge of assessment methodologies, ranging from report-based methods to device-based methods such as accelerometers and emerging technologi...

Introduction Patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) have a higher risk of developing cognitive impairment and mental health disorders compared to the general population. Physical exercise might improve their brain health. The overall goal of the HEART-BRAIN randomized controlled trial (RCT) is to investigate the effects of different types of e...

Background We assessed the effects of a 20‐week combined (aerobic and resistance) exercise training programme on the inflammatory profile of prepubertal children with overweight or obesity. Methods Totally 109 participants (10.1 ± 1.1 years, 41% girls) were randomly allocated to an exercise or control group. Adiponectin, C‐reactive protein, epider...

The beneficial effects of physical activity (PA) on gut microbiome have been reported, nevertheless the findings are inconsistent, with the main limitation of subjective methods for assessing PA. It is well accepted that using an objective assessment of PA reduces the measurement error and also allows objective assessment of sedentary behavior (SB)...

Objective Moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity (MVPA) improves glucose levels; however, whether its timing affects daily glycemic control remains unclear. This study aims to investigate the impact of lifestyle MVPA timing on daily glycemic control in sedentary adults with overweight/obesity and metabolic impairments. Methods A total of 186 adult...

Introduction Patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), also called coronary heart disease, have a higher risk of developing cognitive impairment and mental health disorders compared to the general population. There is a need to identify effective and sustainable strategies to improve brain health in individuals with CAD, in which physical exerci...

Aim Sleep duration and bedtime may play a role in children's cardiometabolic health, but research is lacking. This study examined associations between sleep patterns and cardiometabolic risk factors in Swedish nine‐year‐olds. Methods This cross‐sectional study used data from three studies, where identical outcome measures were conducted in 411 nin...

Objectives To examine the relationship between sleep and subcortical brain structures using a shape analysis approach. Methods A total of 98 children with overweight/obesity (10.0 ± 1.1 y, 59 boys) were included in the cross-sectional analyses. Sleep behaviors (i.e., wake time, sleep onset time, total time in bed, total sleep time, sleep efficienc...

This study aimed to examine the association of Mediterranean diet (MD) adherence and MD components with health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in pregnant women from Spain and Sweden. A total of 138 pregnant women from Spain (age: 32.9 ± 4.6 years old) and 302 pregnant women from Sweden (age: 31.3 ± 4.1 years old) were included. MD adherence was as...

Purpose We aimed to examine the associations of 24-hour movement behaviors (moderate-to-vigorous physical activity [MVPA], light physical activity [LPA], sedentary behavior [SB] and sleep) with age-, sex- and race-specific areal bone mineral density (aBMD) Z-score parameters at clinical sites in young pediatric cancer survivors. Methods This cross...

The beneficial effects of physical activity (PA) on gut microbiome have been reported, nevertheless the findings are inconsistent, with the main limitation of subjective methods for assessing PA. It is well-accepted that using an objective assessment of PA reduces the measurement error and allows also objective assessment of sedentary behavior (SB)...

Objective The objective of this study was to examine the chronic effects of a 20‐week exercise training program on device‐assessed sleep and sleep‐disordered breathing; and to determine whether participating in a session of the exercise program had effects on device‐assessed sleep the subsequent night in children with overweight/obesity. Methods A...

Background Physical activity guidelines for children encourage moderate-to-vigorous intensity activities (MVPA); however, some studies have found that only vigorous intensity activities (VPA) might promote health benefits in young children. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate cross-sectional and 5-year longitudinal associations of VPA and...

This study aimed to investigate whether the effects of an exercise program during pregnancy on postpartum body composition are moderated by following a healthy dietary pattern (i.e., Mediterranean diet (MD)). Eighty-three pregnant women (control n = 40, exercise n = 43) were included in the present quasi-experimental study. The exercise interventio...

Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a 20-week exercise program on bone mineral parameters in children with overweight or obesity. Design Randomized controlled trial. Methods This study took part from November 21, 2014, to June 30, 2016, in Granada, Spain. A secondary analysis of this parallel-group randomized control...

This chapter provides an extensive description of the associations of physical activity and physical fitness with mental health outcomes in youths. Both physical activity and physical fitness have been considered relevant markers of physical health outcomes in children in the last decades. This chapter discusses whether they can also be considered...

Importance: Childhood obesity is a risk factor associated with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental disorders later in life. Investigation of the parallel effects of a defined exercise program on cardiometabolic and mental health in children with overweight or obesity may provide new insights on the potential benefits of exercise on...

We aimed to investigate whether the effects of exercise on placental relative telomere length (RTL) after delivery are modulated by the Mediterranean diet [MD] adherence in 65 pregnant women (control n = 34, exercise n = 31). No differences were found in placental RTL between the exercise and the control groups (p = 0.557). The interaction-term bet...

Objective To investigate the association of accelerometer-measured lifestyle physical activity with rapid-rate non-sustained ventricular tachycardias (RR-NSVTs) in patients with arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (AC). Methods This multicentre, observational study enrolled 72 patients with AC, including right, left and biventricular forms of the diseas...

Background The associations of movement behaviours (physical activity [PA], sedentary behaviour [SB], and sleep) with body composition and physical fitness from pre-school to childhood, as well as the direction of the associations, could provide important information for healthy lifestyle promotion in children. This study investigated the longitudi...

To examine the association of Mediterranean diet (MD) adherence during pregnancy with maternal and neonatal lipid, glycemic, and inflammatory markers. This study included 152 women from the GESTAFIT trial and a subsample of 35 newborns. The Mediterranean Diet Score, derived from food frequency questionnaires, was employed to assess MD adherence. To...

Objectives: To examine the association between physical activity, sedentary time, and physical fitness with the shapes of subcortical brain structures in children with overweight/obesity. Further, we analyzed whether differences in the shapes of subcortical brain structures were related to intelligence. We hypothesized that those children with hig...

Targeting lifestyle behaviors during pregnancy is crucial to prevent the highly prevalent postpartum depression and its consequences. In these secondary analyses of an intervention trial to investigate the effects of concurrent exercise training on postpartum depression, we aimed to investigate the potential role of Mediterranean diet (MD) adherenc...

Objective The aim of the present study was to provide practical considerations for assessing MD adherence during pregnancy based on the association with cardiometabolic risk. Study design: Longitudinal study Main outcome measures: A food frequency questionnaire was fulfilled by 152 pregnant women at the 16th gestational week (g.w.). We calculated t...

Objectives To examine 1) the chronic effects of a 20-week physical exercise program on device-assessed sleep and on sleep-disordered breathing (SDB); and 2) whether attending to a session of the exercise program had effects on device-assessed sleep the subsequent night in children with overweight/obesity. Methods A total of 99 children with overwe...

Objective: The aim of the present study was to provide practical considerations for assessing MD adherence during pregnancy based on the association with cardiometabolic risk. Study design: Longitudinal study Main outcome measures: A food frequency questionnaire was fulfilled by 152 pregnant women at the 16th gestational week (g.w.). We calculated...

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of 24-hour movement behaviors (sleep, sedentary behavior [SB], light physical activity [LPA] and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity [MVPA]) with body composition and cardiometabolic health in i) early-, and ii) late pregnancy (gestational weeks 14 a...

Purpose The relation between diet and maternal mental health during pregnancy might be relevant to prevent adverse materno-foetal outcomes. This study examined the association of Mediterranean diet (MD) adherence and MD components with mental health during pregnancy. Methods This secondary analysis of the GESTAFIT trial included longitudinal data...

Importance: Pediatric overweight and obesity are highly prevalent across the world, with implications for poorer cognitive and brain health. Exercise might potentially attenuate these adverse consequences. Objectives: To investigate the effects of an exercise program on brain health indicators, including intelligence, executive function, academi...

Importance: Childhood obesity is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes (T2D), cardiovascular disease, and mental disorders later in life. To investigate the parallel effects on cardiometabolic and mental health in children with overweight or obesity will provide new insights on the benefits of exercise on overall health. Objective: This study aimed to...

Digital clinical measures based on data collected by wearable devices have seen rapid growth in both clinical trials and healthcare. The widely-used measures based on wearables are epoch-based physical activity counts using accelerometer data. Even though activity counts have been the backbone of thousands of clinical and epidemiological studies, t...

Aim: Adipokines seem to play a role in bone morphogenesis, although this also depends on the mechanical forces applied to the skeleton. The aim was to assess the relationships of resting leptin and adiponectin with bone parameters and whether high muscular fitness levels affect these relationships in children with overweight or obesity. Methods:...

INTRODUCTION: Observational studies have consistently shown that exercise triggers and accelerate disease progression in patients with arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (AC), and sports participation is generally restricted. Therefore, individuals with AC may be susceptible to engage in low physical activity levels. This study aimed to objectively desc...

Approximately 4–11% of children suffer from sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), and children with obesity are at increased risk. Both obesity and SDB have been separately associated with poorer brain health, yet whether SDB severity affects brain health in children with obesity remains unanswered. This study aimed to examine associations of SDB sever...

Objective: To analyze whether 13 weeks of Integrative Neuromuscular Training can benefit spatiotemporal and kinematic parameters of gait in children with overweight/obesity. Methods: This is a non-randomized controlled trial. Fifty children (10.77 ± 1.24 years, 31 girls) with overweight/obesity were allocated to an exercise group (EG) (n=25) tha...

the benefits of physical activity (PA) and sleep for health, accurate and objective population-based surveillance is important. Monitor-based surveillance has potential, but the main challenge is the need for replicable outcomes from different monitors. This study investigated the agreement of movement behavior outcomes assessed with four research-...

Objectives To investigate the effects of exercise on intelligence, executive functions, academic performance and brain outcomes in children with overweight/obesity. In secondary analyses, we explored potential mediators and moderators of the exercise effects. Methods A total of 109 children (8-11.9y) with overweight/obesity were randomized (intent...

This study aimed to compare sedentary time (SED) and intensity‐specific physical activity (PA) estimates and the associations of SED and PA with body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) using three different sets of cut‐points in preschool‐aged children. A total of 751 children (4.7 ± 0.9 years, boys 52.7%) wore an ActiGraph GT3X+BT accel...

Objective To evaluate the associations of parent-reported sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and device-assessed sleep behaviors with behavioral and emotional functioning in pediatric overweight/obesity. Study design A total of 109 children with overweight/obesity (10.0±1.1 years) were included in this cross-sectional study. We used the Spanish vers...

Background Information is limited for the benefits of physical activity (PA) in preschoolers. Previous research using accelerometer‐assessed PA may be affected for multicollinearity issues. Objectives This study investigated the cross‐sectional and prospective associations of sedentary behaviour (SB) and PA with body composition and physical fitne...

Background Digital clinical measures based on data collected by wearable devices have seen rapid growth in both clinical trials and healthcare. The widely-used measures based on wearables are epoch-based physical activity counts using accelerometer data. Even though activity counts have been the backbone of thousands of clinical and epidemiological...

Background Pregnancy has been identified as a window for childhood obesity prevention. Although lifestyle interventions in pregnancy can prevent excessive gestational weight gain (GWG), little is known whether such interventions also affect infant growth and body composition. Objectives To investigate (i) the effects of a 6‐month lifestyle interve...

Abstract Background While physical activity has consistently been associated with decreased mortality rates, it remains unknown if there is a single “ideal” combination of time in physical activities of different intensities and sedentary behavior (SB) associated with the lowest rate. This study examined the associations of combinations of time in...

Background Physical fitness is an important marker of current and future health status, yet the association between physical fitness and indicators of mental health in youth has not been systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed. Objective The aim of this work was to systematically review and meta-analyze the association between physical fitness c...

The constrained total energy expenditure (TEE) model posits that progressive increases in physical activity (PA) lead to increases in TEE; but after certain PA threshold, TEE plateaus. Then, a compensatory reduction in the expenditure of non-essential activities constrains the TEE. We hypothesized that high PA levels as locomotion associate with a...

Accelerometers’ accuracy for sedentary time (ST) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) classification depends on accelerometer placement, data processing, activities, and sample characteristics. As intensities differ by age, this study sought to determine intensity cut-points at various wear locations people more than 70 years old. Data...

The inter-relationship between physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep (collectively defined as physical behaviours) is of interest to researchers from different fields. Each of these physical behaviours has been investigated in epidemiological studies, yet their codependency and interactions need to be further explored and accounted for i...

Background Excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) during pregnancy is a major public health concern associated with negative health outcomes for both mother and child. Scalable interventions are needed, and digital interventions have the potential to reach many women and promote healthy GWG. Most previous studies of digital interventions have been...

The role of lifestyle behaviors on neck adipose tissue (NAT), a fat depot that appears to be involved in the pathogenesis of different cardiometabolic diseases and in inflammatory status, is unknown. In this cross-sectional and exploratory study, the authors examined the relationship between sedentary time and physical activity (PA) with neck adipo...

BACKGROUND Excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) during pregnancy is a major public health concern associated with negative health outcomes for both mother and child. Scalable interventions are needed, and digital interventions have the potential to reach many women and promote healthy GWG. Most previous studies of digital interventions have been...

Considerable public health efforts across the globe have focused on promoting physical activity (PA) and minimizing sedentary behaviour (SB) in youths. However, it is important to have valid, reliable and feasible methods to assess these behaviours in youths. The purpose of this study was to analyse the feasibility and reliability of the Spanish ve...

This study aimed to analyze the associations of activity‐rest pattern indicators with academic achievement, executive function, and intelligence and to explore whether these associations are mediated by the total gray matter volume among children with overweight/obesity. Ninety‐five children (10 ± 1 year, 37 girls) with overweight/obesity (based on...

The present study aims (i) to examine the association of physical fitness components (i.e., cardiorespiratory fitness, speed-agility, and muscular fitness) with brain current source density during working memory; and (ii) to examine whether fitness-related current density was associated to working memory performance and academic achievement. Eighty...

Background Children with overweight/obesity have poorer sleep and smaller gray matter volume (GMV) than normal‐weight children. No studies have investigated the associations of objectively‐assessed sleep and GMV in children with overweight/obesity, or their implications for academic and cognitive outcomes. Objectives To explore the associations of...

PurposeTo evaluate the association of objectively measured physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour before and during in vitro fertilization (IVF) with controlled ovarian stimulation (COS) and pregnancy outcomes.Methods This longitudinal study involved 107 infertile women undergoing IVF treatment. PA and sedentary behaviour were measured for...

It is discussed whether associations between accelerometer-derived physical activity intensities and outcomes should be analysed as absolute or relative data. The aim of the present study was to compare interpretation of association patterns of spectrum physical activity descriptions with outcome using raw, normalized, log-transformed, or compositi...

Background We examined the association of time allocation among physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior (SB) and sleep with unhealthy aging (UA), using both accelerometry and self-reports. Methods We used cross-sectional data from 2312 individuals ≥65 years. PA, SB and sleep were ascertained by both wrist accelerometers and validated questionna...

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a valid and non-invasive indicator of cardiac autonomic nervous system functioning. Short-term HRV recordings (e.g., 10 min long) produce data that usually is manually processed. Researcher subjective decision-making on data processing could produce inter- or intra-researcher differences whose magnitude has not been...

Molina-Garcia, P, Mora-Gonzalez, J, Migueles, JH, Rodriguez-Ayllon, M, Esteban-Cornejo, I, Cadenas-Sanchez, C, Plaza-Florido, A, Gil-Cosano, JJ, Pelaez-Perez, MA, Garcia-Delgado, G, Vanrenterghem, J, and Ortega, FB. Effects of exercise on body posture, functional movement, and physical fitness in children with overweight/obesity. J Strength Cond Re...

The aim of this study was to examine the associations of sedentary behaviour, physical activity, cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), and body composition parameters with risk of sleep-related breathing disorders (SRBD) in children with overweight/obesity. One-hundred and nine children (10.0 ± 1.1 years old, 45 girls) with overweight (n = 27) and obesi...

The present work examines the relationships of objectively measured sedentary time and physical activity (PA) with maximal fat oxidation during exercise (MFO) and the intensity of exercise that elicits MFO (Fatmax), in young and middle-aged men and women. A total of 121 young sedentary adults (81 women, age 22.1±2.12 years, body mass index 25.2±4.9...

Background: Best-practice early interventions to increase physical activity (PA) in children with overweight and obesity should be both feasible and evidence based. Walking is a basic human movement pattern that is practical, cost-effective, and does not require complex movement skills. However, there is still a need to investigate how much walkin...

We investigated the associations of different sedentary behaviors (SB) with gray matter volume and we tested whether SB related to gray matter volume is associated with intelligence. Methods: 99 children with overweight or obesity aged 8-11 years participated in this cross-sectional study. SB was measured using the Youth Activity Profile-Spain qu...

This study investigated physical activity (PA) and sedentary time (SED) in relation to hippocampal gray matter volume (GMV) in pediatric overweight/obesity. Ninety-three children (10 ± 1 year) were classified as overweight, obesity type I, or type II–III. PA was assessed with non-dominant wrist accelerometers. GMV was acquired by magnetic resonance...

The aim of this study was to examine whether metabolically healthy overweight/obese children have greater global and regional gray matter volumes than their metabolically unhealthy peers. We further examined the association between gray matter volume and academic achievement, along with the role of cardiorespiratory fitness in these associations. A...

Whereas numerous studies have investigated the relationship of cardiorespiratory fitness with inhibition and neuroelectric activity, the role of other physical fitness components and physical activity (PA) intensities in this relationship remain unclear, especially in children with obesity. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate th...

Background Non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease is the most common liver disease in childhood and is related to insulin resistance and cardiometabolic risk factors. Evidence supporting the association of fitness and physical activity with hepatic fat, liver enzymes or triglyceride‐to‐ high‐density lipoprotein ratio is scarce in children. Objective To...

Objective: This study aimed to 1) analyze the criterion validity of the Slaughter equations (Slg-Eq) and bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) to estimate body fat percentage (BFP) and fat mass index (FMI) at different degrees of obesity in children compared with dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and 2) determine their agreement over time....

The aim of this study was to examine the associations of fitness and physical activity with academic achievement in children with overweight/obesity. A total of 106 (10.0 ± 1.1y, 61 boys) children participated. The fitness components were assessed by field and laboratory-based tests. Physical activity was measured via accelerometry. The academic ac...

Objective: This study investigates the effects of different training modalities on sleep quality parameters. Methods: A total of 69 (52.7% women) middle-aged sedentary adults were randomized to: (i) control group, (ii) physical activity recommendation from the World Health Organization, (iii) high intensity interval training (HIIT), and (iv) hig...

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a non-invasive indicator of autonomic nervous system function. HRV recordings show artefacts due to technical and/or biological issues. The Kubios software is one of the most used software to process HRV recordings, offering different levels of threshold-based artefact correction (i.e., Kubios filters). The aim of th...

Background It has been shown that meteorological conditions and season affect physical activity (PA) during adolescence. Today, meteorological conditions have never been combined to study their influence on PA level in a single sample of a large adolescent multicountries population. The aim of this study was to explore the influence of meteorologic...

Objectives: This study aimed: (i) to provide a detailed description of sleep, sedentary behavior (SED), light physical activity (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) over the complete 24-h period using raw acceleration data in older adults; and (ii) to examine the differences in the 24-h activity cycle by sex, age, education, an...

To examine whether areal bone mineral density (aBMD) differs between metabolically healthy (MHO) and unhealthy (MUO) overweight/obese children and to examine the role of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) in this association. A cross-sectional study was developed in 188 overweight/obese children (10.4...

Large epidemiological studies that use accelerometers for physical behavior and sleep assessment differ in the location of the accelerometer attachment and the signal aggregation metric chosen. This study aimed to assess the comparability of acceleration metrics between commonly-used body-attachment locations for 24 hours, waking and sleeping hours...

Background: We compared differences in physical activity (PA) between pre/mid-pubertal and post-pubertal participants according to gender. Methods: The study included a total of 1842 healthy participants aged 12.5-17.4 years, who participated in the Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence (HELENA) study. Participants wore a uniax...

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate associations of objectively measured and self-reported physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior with white matter microstructure in children with overweight or obesity. Methods: In a sample of 103 participants (10.02±1.15 years old; 42 girls) from the ActiveBrains project, we assessed PA and sedentar...