Background
Methods
Overall trial design
Interventiona
| Allocation | Description |
---|---|---|
Physical activity | Brisk walking | Walking at a brisk pace for 30 min, at least 5 days a week, on top of normal physical activity |
Control | Carrying on with normal levels of physical activity | |
Nutrition | Lycopene supplement | Taking one lycopene capsule daily |
Plant-based diet | Eating as many portions of fruit and vegetables per day as possible, aiming for at least five daily portions. In addition, swapping dairy milk for non-dairy alternatives, for example soy milk, almond milk or rice milk, as often as possible | |
Control | Carrying on with usual diet |
Sample selection
Characteristic |
n = 17 | ||
---|---|---|---|
n or mean | % or standard deviation | ||
Age (years) | 66 | 5.49 | |
Ethnicity | White British, white other | 16 | 94 |
Caribbean | 1 | 6 | |
Education level | Secondary school | 9 | 53 |
Further education | 1 | 6 | |
University | 7 | 41 | |
Occupation status | Retired | 12 | 71 |
Employed | 5 | 29 | |
Trial arm | Lycopene, physical activity control | 3 | 18 |
Plant-based diet, physical activity control | 3 | 18 | |
Brisk walking, diet control | 3 | 18 | |
Lycopene and walking | 4 | 23 | |
Diet and walking | 3 | 18 | |
Control | 1 | 6 |
Data collection
Data analysis
Results
Intervention acceptability
Uptake of interventions
I found it fairly easy… In the main, I find that I manage to eat sufficient – more often than not I manage to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. – 13, Diet
I think after you’ve established a routine with it, it becomes very easy. – 03, Lycopene
Well, that’s the important thing with these sorts of activity, is trying to build it into your routine. – 09, Brisk walking
Really, if it helps people understand what goes on… It didn’t require me to do very much. I could take part and I could take part usefully without having to do some massive change in lifestyle or whatever. It seemed worth doing. – 10, Brisk walking
Diet and physical activity preferences
I think I would probably struggle because I am not a great fruit eater… The (lycopene) tablets were fine. I get no trouble with tablets. – 08, Lycopene & walkingThe lycopene was absolutely… You know, it’s taking a tablet. That’s absolutely fine… As far as taking any natural product, you know, providing it is a natural product, it’s there in nature anyway. – 05, Lycopene & walking
I did say I would (take the supplement), but I would much prefer to have got it naturally.– 06, Brisk Walking
I’d gone onto soya milk, but then, I just stopped it altogether… It just doesn’t make a nice cup of tea. – 02, Diet
I’m not a walker. I’m more of a cyclist, so it was a change of… well, I’d have to say, ‘Lifestyle’, but a change of leisure time, really. – 10, Brisk walking
Acceptability of diet and physical activity measures
Dietary self-report measures
Yes, a lot of it was about the food and that sort of thing, and, yes, just, sort of, trying to work out what to put was quite difficult. I mean, how many times do I eat beef in a month… and, you know, and with different vegetables? Yes, I don’t know how accurate it was, but I think I tried to be as objective and as accurate as I could. – 09, Brisk walking
It was also a bit confusing about the portion size of those vegetables and that sort of thing… I think, for blokes, it’s a bit, ‘A portion is a portion.’ You know, no matter. – 02, Diet
I sat down with my wife actually and she could remember we had carrots twice a week or whatever. I needed a bit of help on that because you can't always remember. – 14, Lycopene & walkingSome of the portions that I put down, you know; my wife went through it after me and she said, ‘That’s rubbish you’ve put down there,’ and it was. – 16, Diet & walking
Because I live on my own, I do the shopping, obviously, and the cooking. So, I more or less know exactly what I’m eating or shopping. – 15, Lycopene
Physical activity monitoring
Respondent: And I can maybe buy myself a baby pedometer to play with, you know… I was shedding tears giving away my… (Laughter)Interviewer: (Laughter) You bonded with it.Respondent: Yes, that’s right. – 03, Lycopene
Even the log was not so bad because it was slightly reflective, so I could go, ‘Oh, what have I been doing today?’ – 07, Diet & walkingI got into the habit of doing it [the daily monitoring], yes, because that was part of the incentive to, sort of, or the drive to make me do it. – 09, Brisk walking
Because every now and then, you’re knocking against something, and it comes off. And a couple of times, I thought, ‘Oh God, I've lost it.’ It was in the car, or somewhere. – 04, Brisk walking
Trial logistics
Duration of intervention
It becomes so much a part of your routine that you just accept it, you know? – 03, Lycopene
I think it would become a bit of a chore, doing it for a year, just the recording. – 09, Brisk walking
I have to say, when I got to the end of the 6 months. I thought, ‘I haven't got to fill that form out every day and I haven’t got to record this and record that,’… I’m still carrying on doing it [changes to diet and walking] but of course not recording it is the… beauty as I see it. – 16, Diet & walking
Timing of approaching patients
I had already started doing – you know, to do as much as I could anyway, because I’d been told by the surgeon to do that. – 04, Brisk walkingSo I think, you know, 4 to 6 weeks [after surgery] is probably a good time to start. In fact, I did start to get active anyway. I think I went for a swim, just a short one, after about 4½ weeks. – 09, Brisk walking
I would say it would be only after you had the catheter thing out… because walking with that in is not fun. – 04, Brisk walking
Motivational reminders
I think probably that, on balance, it’s probably a good thing to do. Did it help me? Probably not, because I was, sort of, fairly enthusiastic about keeping that going anyway. – 09, Brisk walkingSo I mean, I think probably I didn't need the calls… So in that sense they were slightly irritating, but I completely understand why you would do it in general. – 04, Brisk walkingFor others, the additional contact, particularly with the research nurse was a positive experience:It just made me feel like you were appreciating my involvement really and they were keeping in touch all the time as to what was going on, sort of thing. You know, I wasn’t just away from the people who were doing the research, that I was involved in it. – 15, Lycopene