Qigong improves balance in young women: a pilot study

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J Integr Med. 2013 Jul;11(4):241-5

 

Authors: González López-Arza MV, Varela-Donoso E, Montanero-Fernández J, Rodríguez-Mansilla J, González-Sánchez B, González López-Arza L

 

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Balance problems are common in people of all ages and can lead to falls, thus causing fractures with consequent disability. Qigong practice has long been part of daily life in Chinese culture, and has good effects on physical health maintenance.

OBJECTIVE: The present work describes the change in balance in young, healthy women after practising Qigong for eight weeks.

DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND INTERVENTIONS: The study took the form of a controlled, randomised longitudinal trial, and involved 30 women aged 18-25 years. The subjects had no prior experience of Qigong or Tai Chi and were unaware of the aims of the study. Subjects were randomly assigned to a Qigong intervention group or a control group. Those in the Qigong intervention group performed “exercises in 20 figures for health and long-life” (Wang Ziping) for 1 h twice per week, for 4 weeks. The control group undertook no exercise at all.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The main outcome measure was the stabilometry values. These were obtained in a unipodal support test, using a plantar pressure platform with optical sensors.

RESULTS: The Qigong subjects showed a significant improvement in their stabilometry results (40.1% pre-intervention and 56.4% post-intervention) (P< 0.045), while no improvement was seen in the control group (51.2% pre-intervention and 53.5% post-intervention). At the beginning of the intervention, the stabilometry values recorded for the Qigong intervention group were worse than those recorded for the control group (40.15% and 51.21% respectively; P=0.121). However, a comparison of the post-intervention values between these groups showed that these differences have disappeared (P=0.653).

CONCLUSION: Qigong can improve balance in healthy, young women.PMID: 23867242 [PubMed – in process]

Tony Burris, L.Ac.,  is a 17-year practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and is an expert in safe and effective acupuncture therapy and herbal remedies. He is the only practitioner in the United States that offers a “Painless Acupuncture- Or Your Money Back!” Guarantee. Tony helps frustrated and injured athletes and chronic pain sufferers discover a unique therapy system that often provides long-lasting or even permanent pain relief. His patients include members of the San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins, Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions. Tony also treats members of the Seattle Mariners, Olympic medalists, mixed martial artists and NCAA competitors. Contact Tony @ tony@eagleacuuncture.com

Tai chi tied to longer life

(Reuters Health) – Chinese men who practiced tai chi were less likely to die over a five-year period than men who didn’t exercise at all, in a new study.

The findings support past studies that found health benefits related to the traditional Chinese exercise.

“It combines slow motion exercise and mind concentration to focus on movement. That itself can reduce your stress and, of course, it will increase your flexibility and endurance,” said Dr. Xianglan Zhang, one of the study’s authors from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.

Zhang said her study could not prove, however, that tai chi was responsible for some men’s longer lifespan.

Earlier research has shown tai chi can be beneficial for people with chronic conditions, for example by improving balance among those with Parkinson’s disease (see Reuters Health report of February 8, 2012 here: reut.rs/xtA2xa).

To see whether tai chi and other forms of exercise might influence lifespan, Zhang and her colleagues looked to a large study of middle aged and elderly men in Shanghai.

More than 61,000 men participated in the study. Researchers tracked their health and lifestyle for more than five years.

Close to 22,000 participants reported that they exercised at least once a week, and the rest were considered non-exercisers.

Over the course of the study, 2,421 men died, including 3.3 percent of the non-exercisers and 5.1 percent of the men who exercised.

Exercisers tended to be older and more of them had heart disease and diabetes.

After Zhang’s group took into account men’s age, health conditions and whether they smoked, exercise was tied to a 20 percent lower likelihood of dying.

Similarly, 6.2 percent of the close to 10,000 men who practiced tai chi died during the study, but after accounting for other risk factors, the researchers found they were 20 percent less likely to die than men who didn’t exercise.

Men who walked regularly were 23 percent less likely to die during the study, and men who jogged were 27 percent less likely to die, Zhang’s team reports in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Dr. Chenchen Wang, director of the Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said that because Zhang’s study was observational, and did not randomly assign people to practice tai chi or not, it’s impossible to say whether the exercise itself is responsible for the findings.

There’s always the possibility, for instance, that people who choose tai chi tend to have healthier lifestyles.

But Wang, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health the results are interesting, and “they provide a very important foundation for future research.”

Zhang said the findings support tai chi as a healthy activity.

“I think for the elderly people, especially to maintain flexibility and balance, this is a good option for people to consider,” Zhang told Reuters Health.

Tony Burris, L.Ac.,  is an 18-year practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and is an expert in safe and effective acupuncture therapy and herbal remedies. He is the only practitioner in the United States that offers a “Painless Acupuncture- Or Your Money Back!” Guarantee. Tony helps frustrated and injured athletes and chronic pain sufferers discover a unique therapy system that often provides long-lasting or even permanent pain relief. His patients include members of the San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins, Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions. Tony also treats members of the Seattle Mariners, Olympic medalists, mixed martial artists and is the team acupuncturist for the Treasure Valley Roller Girls. Contact Tony @ tony@eagleacuuncture.com

 

 

 

Press Release: Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Loneliness in Older Adults, Carnegie Mellon Study Shows

Researchers Also Found That Mindfulness Meditation Training Lowers Inflammation Levels and Alters Gene Expression

PITTSBURGH—For older adults, loneliness is a major risk factor for health problems — such as cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s — and death. Attempts to diminish loneliness with social networking programs like creating community centers to encourage new relationships have not been effective.

However, a new study led by Carnegie Mellon University’s J. David Creswell offers the first evidence that mindfulness meditation reduces loneliness in older adults. Published in “Brain, Behavior & Immunity,” the researchers also found that mindfulness meditation — a 2,500-year-old practice dating back to Buddha that focuses on creating an attentive awareness of the present moment — lowered inflammation levels, which is thought to promote the development and progression of many diseases. These findings provide valuable insights into how mindfulness meditation training can be used as a novel approach for reducing loneliness and the risk of disease in older adults.

Click Here To Learn More About Meditation

“We always tell people to quit smoking for health reasons, but rarely do we think about loneliness in the same way,” said Creswell, assistant professor of psychology within CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “We know that loneliness is a major risk factor for health problems and mortality in older adults. This research suggests that mindfulness meditation training is a promising intervention for improving the health of older adults.”

Click Here To Learn More About Meditation in Boise, Idaho by Eagle Acupuncture

For the study, the research team recruited 40 healthy adults aged 55-85 who indicated an interest in learning mindfulness meditation techniques. Each person was assessed at the beginning and end of the study using an established loneliness scale. Blood samples also were collected.

The participants were randomly assigned to receive either the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program or no treatment. The MBSR program consisted of weekly two-hour meetings in which participants learned body awareness techniques — noticing sensations and working on breathing — and worked their way toward understanding how to mindfully attend to their emotions and daily life practices. They also were asked to practice mindfulness meditation exercises for 30 minutes each day at home and attended a daylong retreat.

The researchers found that eight weeks of the mindfulness meditation training decreased the participants’ loneliness. Using the blood samples collected, they found that the older adult sample had elevated pro-inflammatory gene expression in their immune cells at the beginning of the study, and that the training reduced this pro-inflammatory gene expression, as well as a measure of C-Reactive Protein (CRP). These findings suggest that mindfulness meditation training may reduce older adults’ inflammatory disease risk.

“Reductions in the expression of inflammation-related genes were particularly significant because inflammation contributes to a wide variety of the health threats including cancer, cardiovascular diseases and neurodegenerative diseases,” said study collaborator Steven Cole, professor of medicine and psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine.

While the health effects of the observed gene expression changes were not directly measured in the study, Cole noted that “these results provide some of the first indications that immune cell gene expression profiles can be modulated by a psychological intervention.”

Creswell added that while this research suggests a promising new approach for treating loneliness and inflammatory disease risk in older adults, more work needs to be done. “If you’re interested in using mindfulness meditation, find an instructor in your city,” he said. “It’s important to train your mind like you train your biceps in the gym.”

In addition to Creswell and Cole, the research team included UCLA’s Michael R. Irwin, Lisa J. Burklund and Matthew D. Lieberman and the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology’s Jeffrey Ma and Elizabeth Crabb Breen.

For more information, watch this short video of Creswell explaining the research: http://youtu.be/OWpsZvOsZDA.

The National Institutes of Health, the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA and the Inflammatory Biology Care Laboratory of the UCLA Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center funded this research.

Tony Burris, L.Ac., is a 17-year practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and is an expert in safe and effective acupuncture therapy and herbal remedies. He is the only practitioner in the United States that offers a “Painless Acupuncture- Or Your Money Back!” Guarantee. Tony helps frustrated and injured athletes and chronic pain sufferers discover a unique therapy system that often provides long-lasting or even permanent pain relief. His patients include members of the San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins, Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions. Tony also treats members of the Seattle Mariners, Olympic medalists, mixed martial artists and NCAA competitors. Visit Tony’s other blog at The Taoist Club of Boise or visit his website.