App has transgender support in mind
At least one transgender person has attempted or committed suicide today in Ontario alone, according to a Trans Pulse study of more than 380 transgender individuals.
That’s why two Niagara women are developing a course that will help people who identify as transgender to overcome mental-health struggles through fitness.
The Transforming Fitness course will be powered through an online exercise app called Embodia, which offers a variety of courses to help people with different needs stay active and positive about their situations.
ScheduledtolaunchinJune,Transforming Fitness will also help transgender people to reach their physical goals during gender transitions and will provide an outline to fitness and health-care professionals to properly work with transgender patients.
“Exercise has been proven in countless research studies to have a positive impact on mental health,” says Celeste Turner, a fitness and health promotion student from Niagara College and member of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Through researching many of these studies, we have found what exercise parameters (types of exercises, intensity, etcetera) are best suited to improve mental health.”
Turner, who’s from Niagara-onthe-Lake, says by combining these parameters with a transgender person’s esthetic goals, “we have created the optimal exercise programming for them.”
“For example, if someone who is transitioning from female to male wishes to gain more muscle, we would combine the goal of hypertrophy (increasing muscle mass) with the mental-health parameters.” Turner says the idea for the app came from a discussion with a colleague whose partner had a double mastectomy to better identify as non-binary, which means they don’t identify as any gender.
She says when people hear the term mastectomy, they typically think of cancer, as was the case with her.
That’s what gave her the idea to team up with Niagara College professor Jodi Steele, a registered physiotherapist who has worked extensively with breast-cancer patients, offering post-op mastectomy care.
Turner acknowledges the surgeries for cancer patients and transgender patients aren’t the same, but says Steele is researching and learning more about trans post-op care.
According to Rainbow Health Ontario, it remains a frequent challenge for trans people to access health-care services for general and transitionrelated services.
The province-wide program says some of the challenges trans people face are discrimination, denial of hormone treatments and general discomfort with regards to discussing transgender issues with their doctor.
A 2010 study by Trans Pulse Project found that one in 200 Ontario adults identify as transgender, and among them, 46 per cent will experience suicidal thoughts at some time in their life, while 10 per cent had attempted or committed suicide in the previous year.
That means this year in Ontario more than 470 people have attempted suicide as a result of mental-health struggles directly related to being transgender.
Turner and Steele aim to bring those numbers down. The two have also teamed with another Niagara College professor, Adam Upshaw, who has a PhD in nutrition.
Nutrition is a component they will eventually incorporate as it “plays a hugeroleinmentalhealthandachieving esthetic goals,” says Turner.
“By no means do we feel that to look male you need to gain muscle,” she says, adding the program is open to all gender identities.