Home-based exercise intervention for children with Ataxia Telangiectasia

Investigating a novel home-based intervention to optimise long-term healthy living with AT

Child's feet in the grass, with a smiley face painted on the bottom of the foot and each toe painted a different colour.

About us

We are a big team of therapists, nurses, clinicians, social workers, researchers, and family members of children with A-T.

With an interest in understanding how exercising could improve health and everyday life of children with A-T, we have designed an intervention that incudes yoga and breathing exercises. This project is funded by the Action for A-T.

Join the adventure

We invite children aged between 4–11 years, living in the UK, to join this exciting yoga adventure programme where they will undertake some fun-filled exercise journeys at home for 8 weeks.

Evidence suggests that physical activity and breathing exercises have the potential to optimise and maintain functional activity for children with A-T. We therefore encourage you and your child to come join this exciting yoga adventure towards feeling healthier and stronger!

Fun-filled exercises

A company called Cosmic Kids have kindly shared their original yoga journeys free of charge to this research study. Our team have made some small changes to make sure that you can enjoy and follow the movies at your own pace without them being too difficult.

In this research study, we would like you to undertake some regular breathing exercises and watch each short yoga movie (four movies to watch per week for 2 months have been prepared). You can decide when you want to do these exercises and if you feel more tired than usual, you can decide to do less or none at all. This research project is really relaxed and flexible as you can decide when and how much exercising you wish to do.

In addition to the movies online, we will send you a breathing muscle trainer to keep, if you wish to try it during the study and an activity pack to keep a track of your progress through the yoga journeys over 8 weeks.

How long do I need to remain part of the study?

If you join us on this project, we will be working with you for about 6 months, but we only ask you to do the exercises for 2 months of that time. The rest of the time we would like to meet with you online to see how you are doing and on 5 occasions go through some assessments of A-T and related symptoms together.

Taking part in this research study is your choice, and you can leave the study if and whenever you want to. This includes if you get the option to join a drug trial that you feel may better benefit your needs. Any contribution that you can make to this study is greatly appreciated.