Older adults who want to improve balance and reduce their risk of falling should start practicing tai chi, according to a new study.
Researchers at the Institute of Injury Prevention and Control, Taipei Medical University in Taipei, Taiwan, compared the effects of tai chi to lower extremity training (LET), which is a form of physical therapy, in a sample group of 368 participants aged 60 and older. All of the participants had received some kind of medical care at a hospital emergency department related to a fall six months prior to the start of the study.
The research team divided the participants into two groups: tai chi and LET. Participants in the tai chi group attended individual classes with instructors. The hour-long classes were offered every single week for 24 consecutive weeks. Tai chi is a practice that includes several different postures and focuses on breathing and relaxation.
The participants in the LET group received the same amount of therapy as the first group. LET involves balance training by strengthening and stretching out the muscles. The participants from both groups were recommended to complete at least 80 percent of the sessions.
All of the participants were encouraged to continue practicing their respective therapies at home during and after the program. The researchers measured six functional factors, which were handgrip strength, balance, mobility, depression, mental ability and fear of falling. They also grouped falls into four measures: falls, fallers, recurrent fallers and time to first fall.
At the six-month mark, the researchers compared the results from both groups and found that people from the tai chi group were less likely to have a fall that would result in an injury. At the 12-month mark, participants from the tai chi group still had a 50-percent reduced chance of experiencing an injury-causing fall.
The team also found that cognitive function improved more in the tai chi group than in the LET group. Participants receiving LET, however, had higher improvements for the other functional measures.
"Both interventions improved balance and motor control, muscular strength, depressive symptoms, and cognitive function, although the TCC [tai chi chuan] group did not exhibit greater improvements in the aforementioned functional outcomes than the LET group except in cognition," the authors wrote.
"I suggest that older adults learn tai chi exercises in a class, and practice at home at least once a day," Mau-Roung Lin, co-author of the study, said in the press release.
The findings were published in the Feb. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
