Workplace healthy-aging promotion in midlife: mental health and Mediterranean-diet gains from a pilot intervention
Introduction: Population aging is reshaping occupational health, as midlife mental health and lifestyle behaviors influence later-life morbidity. This uncontrolled before-after pilot study evaluated whether a multidisciplinary healthy-aging promotion program (nutrition, physical activity, mental health) was associated with changes in physical and mental health among workers from the Spanish chemical industry. Methods: A pilot before-after longitudinal study without a control group in 18 of 29 enrolled workers (62% completion; 66.67% women; median age 47 years [IQR 45.00-50.50]) who completed a 16-week, 22-workshop program on nutrition, physical activity, and stress management. Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, body fat, visceral fat level, muscle mass, Mediterranean-diet adherence (PREDIMED), physical activity (IPAQ), perceived stress (PSS), and mental-component quality of life (MCS-QoL) were assessed at baseline (T0), program end (T4), and 5 months later (T9), using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test (r as effect size); analyzes were exploratory, with significance set at p < 0.05, uncorrected. Results: At T4, body fat, visceral fat level, muscle mass, IPAQ, PREDIMED, PSS, and MCS-QoL improved significantly (r = 0.51-0.81; p ≤ 0.029), with non-significant favorable trends for BMI, waist circumference, or blood pressure. At T9, improvements were sustained for PREDIMED (r = 0.65; p = 0.006), PSS (r = 0.58; p = 0.013), and MCS-QoL (r = 0.55; p = 0.018), with non-significant favorable trends for the remaining variables. Conclusions: In this uncontrolled pilot study, a multidisciplinary workplace healthy-aging program was associated with short-term improvements across lifestyle, physical, and mental health outcomes, most consistently retained at five months for Mediterranean-diet adherence, perceived stress, and mental-component quality of life. Findings are preliminary and hypothesis-generating and require confirmation in controlled studies.