Article
Tai Chi improves standing balance control under reduced or conflicting sensory conditions1,

Presented in part at the International Society for Postural and Gait Research meeting, June 23–27, 2001, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2003.02.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Tsang WW, Wong VS, Fu SN, Hui-Chan CW. Tai Chi improves standing balance control under reduced or conflicting sensory conditions. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 2004;85:129–37.

Objective

To investigate the effects of long-term Tai Chi practice on balance control when healthy elderly Tai Chi practitioners stood under reduced or conflicting somatosensory, visual, and vestibular conditions, as compared with healthy elderly non-Tai Chi practitioners and young subjects.

Design

Cross-sectional study.

Setting

University-based rehabilitation center in Hong Kong.

Participants

Twenty elderly Tai Chi practitioners (mean experience ± standard deviation, 7.2±7.2y) were compared with 20 elderly non-Tai Chi practitioners and 20 young, healthy university students.

Interventions

Not applicable.

Main outcome measures

The amplitude of anteroposterior body sway under different somatosensory, visual, and vestibular conditions was measured using computerized dynamic posturography, whereby subjects underwent 6 combinations of visual and support surface conditions.

Results

The Tai Chi practitioners had significantly better balance control than the non-Tai Chi subjects in the visual and vestibular ratios, but not in the somatosensory ratio. Furthermore, there were no significant differences in any of these 3 sensory ratios when the Tai Chi practitioners were compared with those of the young, healthy subjects.

Conclusions

Long-term Tai Chi practice improved balance control in the elderly population when there was an increased reliance on the visual and vestibular systems during stance. Of particular interest is that our elderly Tai Chi practitioners attained the same level of balance control performance as did young, healthy subjects when standing under reduced or conflicting somatosensory, visual, and vestibular conditions.

Section snippets

Participants

Twenty young healthy subjects (12 men, 8 women; mean age ± standard deviation [SD], 21.5±1.6y) were recruited. All were university students who had exercised regularly for at least 2 hours a week. Exclusion criteria were the presence of inner ear problems, dizziness, long-term medication, a history of injury within 1 year before the study, and a history of an orthopedic operation or a neurologic disease.

Forty community-dwelling elderly subjects (20 per group), aged 60 or older, participated in

Test-retest reliability of the SOT

Twelve elderly subjects (4 men, 8 women, mean age 68±7.4y) participated in the test-retest reliability study. After measuring their equilibrium quotients in each of the 6 conditions of the SOT, the testing procedures were repeated 1 week after the first testing session. The ICC3,3 was calculated for all 6 conditions (table 1) These values ranged from .72 (condition 3) to .93 (condition 5), which indicated moderate to good correlation.37 The lower bound value of the 95% confidence interval (CI)

Sensory organization test

Quantitative posturography has been used by several researchers to study the ability of elderly subjects to use somatosensory, visual, and vestibular information to control their body sway when standing under reduced or conflicting sensory conditions.29, 31, 38 Results from our reliability study showed that the data obtained under the 6 sensory conditions were repeatable when the same elderly subjects were tested 1 week apart, with ICCs ranging from .72 to .93 (table 1).

In this study, the COP

Conclusion

We investigated possible effects of Tai Chi on balance control by examining subject’s ability to use somatosensory, visual, and vestibular information to control their body sway while standing under 6 different sensory conditions when somatosensory or visual inputs were either absent or inaccurate. Our results indicate that practicing Tai Chi for 7.2±7.2 years improved the control of stance under reduced or conflicting sensory conditions in an elderly population. Elderly Tai Chi practitioners

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Rhonda Scudds, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, for her statistical advice, and Bill Purves for his English editorial advice.

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    Supported by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (research grant).

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