Alison Flehr

OBJECTIVE We aimed to examine whether meal patterns, as well as energy intake from three main meals and snacks, were associated with incident hypertension. METHODS We included 12 995 participants aged 18-59 years from the China Health and Nutrition Survey in the final analysis. Dietary intake was assessed using weighing methods in combination with 24-h food records. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to examine the association of meal patterns, and energy intake from different meals with incident hypertension. RESULTS During a mean follow-up of 11.2 years, 4766 new hypertension cases were documented. Four meal patterns were derived according to energy intake: balanced, breakfast dominant, lunch dominant, and dinner dominant patterns. Dinner dominant meal pattern was associated with a lower risk of incident hypertension [hazard ratio (95% confidence interval): 0.90 (0.84-0.98)] compared with the balanced meal pattern. Breakfast energy intake was positively, but dinn...

The thesis set out to investigate persistent pain from a psychobiological perspective. Specifically it outlines a model of persistent pain that focuses on the shared underlying psychobiology of persistent pain and traumatic stress. This model was then used to inform the development of an exercise intervention. A pilot, randomized controlled trial (#MindinBody RCT) was undertaken to assess the efficacy and feasibility of this exercise intervention for improving persistent pain levels in women with a history of trauma.

Objective To assess whether body pain was associated with different trauma histories (physical injury vs. interpersonal injury [IPI]) within Australian women, along with body pain and trauma history associations with biological and psychological (biopsycho) confounders. Methods A retrospective cross-sectional analysis was conducted on the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) 1973–1978 birth cohort wave 6 data. Relevant life events were categorized into two types of traumatic experience and included as exposure variables in a multinomial regression model for body pain subgroups. Also, subgroup analyses considered trauma and pain effects and interactions on biopsycho burden. Results The unadjusted multinomial regression model revealed that a history of physical injury was found to be significantly associated with body pain severity, as was a history of IPI trauma. After the model was adjusted to include biopsycho confounders, the association between IPI and body pai...