General
Tai Chi is "Medication in Motion"
--Harvard Women's Health Watch 1
"The [Mayo Clinic Health Letter] Special Report on "Lifelong Exercise" covered five different and important kinds of exercise - aerobic, strength training, core stability, flexibility and balance. Tai Chi bring[s] these elements together into a unified form of exercise."
--Mayo Clinic 2
Balance
"After adjusting for fall risk factors, Tai Chi was found to reduce the risk of multiple falls by 47.5%."
--Emory University School of Medicine 3
"Tai Chi participants who showed improvements in measures of functional balance at the intervention endpoint significantly reduced their risk of falls during the 6-month post intervention period."
-- Medical Science Sports and Exercise 4
"Tai Chi involves a conscious awareness of your stance, alignment and balance with attention to footwork so that you know at all times where your feet are in relation to your body."
--Mayo Clinic 2
"95.65% of participants reported balance as one of the reasons they attend the TC4HB program. Participants reported a 27.17% gain in their overall balance and a 25.93% gain in confidence of their balance."
--Movement Arts Institute 16
Pain
"Tai Chi patients had improved physical condition, confidence in moving, stress reduction, increased body awareness, balance and less pain during exercise and in daily life."
--BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 5
"The six weeks of group tai chi followed by another six weeks of home tai chi training showed significant improvements in mean overall knee pain, maximum knee pain and the WOMAC subscales of physical function and stiffness compared to the baseline. All improvements disappeared after detraining."
-- Texas Tech University 6
"(TC4HB)Participants reduced their pain in the top reported categories by 30-61%. 36.95% of participants reported back pain and achieved an average pain reduction of 43.14%. Shoulders were the next most reported problem and participants reported improvement of 30.00%. Neck, Legs and Hands were the other top reported conditions with pain reductions of 42.59%, 33.33% and 41.67% respectively."
--Movement Arts Institute 16
Brain Growth/Memory Improvement
"Participants in the Tai Chi groups showed significant increases in total brain volume over the intervention period as well as improvements on several neuropsychological measures."
-- Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 7
Sleep
"Subjects in the Tai Chi Chih condition were more likely to achieve a treatment response. Significant improvements were noted in sleep quality, sleep duration, and sleep disturbance."
--Sleep 8
Weight Loss/Aerobic
"A 150lb person can burn 270 calories in an hour," doing Tai Chi.
--Reader's Digest 9
"Tai Chi show[s] a beneficial effect aerobic capacity in older individuals, but Tai Chi displays a better training effect than Qigong due to its higher exercise intensity."
--American Journal of Chinese Medicine 10
Stress & Depression
"Improvement in mood state and reduction in perceived stress were found."
-- Journal of Advance Nursing 11
"Subjects in the Tai Chi Chuan condition were more likely to show greater reduction of depressive symptoms and to achieve a depression remission.
--American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 12
Balance for Parkinson's Disease
"The tai chi group performed consistently better than the resistance-training and stretching groups in maximum excursion and in directional control."
-- New England Journal of Medicine 13
Blood Pressure
"After 12-weeks of Tai Chi training, the treatment group showed decrease in systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure."
-- Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 14
"(TC4HB)Participants reported an improvement in their blood pressure of 24.03% with 47.82% of participants reporting a problem with Blood Pressure."
--Movement Arts Institute 16
Blood Sugar/Diabetes
"There were significant improvements in four of the seven indicators of metabolic syndrome including BMI, waist circumference, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure. There were significant improvements..., as well as in, insulin resistance, stress, depressive symptoms, mental health and vitality."
-- University of Queensland 15
"Participants reported improvement in their Blood Sugar regulation of 33.33% but only 17.39% of participants reported a problem with Blood Sugar/Diabetes."
--Movement Arts Institute 16
The PDF version of this document.
or MAI specific program benefits.
References:
1
Harvard Women's Health Watch.
May 2009.
2
Yoga and Tai Chi: Pathways to health and wholeness
Mayo Clinic Health Letter Special Report
October 2008
3
Reducing frailty and falls in older persons: an investigation of tai chi and computerized balance training.
Wolf SL, Barnhart HX, Kutner NG, McNeely E, Coogler C, Xu T; Atlanta FICSIT Group.
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, School of Nursing, Emory University School of Medicine.
(2003) Journal of the American Geriatric Society; Dec;51(12):1794-803
4
Tai Chi: improving functional balance and predicting subsequent falls in older persons.
Li, F., Harmer, P., Fisher, K.J. & McAuley, E.
(2004) Medical Science Sports and Exercise;, 36, 2046-2052
5
Exploring Tai Chi in rheumatoid arthritis: A quantitative and qualitative study.
Uhlig, T., Fongen, C., Steen, E., Christie, A., & Odegard, S.
(2010) BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders; 11, 43.
6
Group and home-based tai chi in elderly subjects with knee osteoarthritis: a randomized controlled trial.
Brismee JM, Paige RL, Chyu MC, Boatright JD, Hagar JM, McCaleb JA, Quintela MM, Feng D, Xu KT, Shen CL.
Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, School of Allied Health Sciences, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Texas
(2007)Clinical Rehabilitation; Feb;21(2):99-11
7
Changes in Brain Volume and Cognition in a Randomized Trial of Exercise and Social Interaction in a Community-Based Sample of Non-Demented Chinese Elders
James A. Mortimera, Ding Dingb, Amy R. Borensteina, Charles DeCarlic, Qihao Guob, Yougui Wua,
Qianhua Zhaob and Shugang Chub
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College of Public Health, University of South Florida; Fudan University School of Public Health; Department of Neurology, University of California/Davis
(2012) Journal of Alzheimer's Disease; 30 757-766 DOI 10.3233/JAD-2012-120079 IOS Press 757
8
Improving sleep quality in older adults with moderate sleep complaints: A randomized controlled trial of Tai Chi Chih.
Irwin MR, Olmstead R, Motivala SJ
(2008) Sleep; 31, 1001-1008.
9
Readers Digest citing a 2001 National Taiwan University Hospital study.
10
The aerobic capacity and ventilator efficiency during exercise in Qigong and Tai Chi Chuan practitioners
Lan, C., Chou, S., Chen, S., Lai, J. & Wong, M.
(2004) American Journal of Chinese Medicine; 32, 141-50
11
Change in perceived psychosocial status following a 12-week Tai Chi exercise programme.
Taylor-Piliae, R., Haskell, W., Waters, C. & Froelicher, E.
(2006) Journal of Advance Nursing; 54, 313-329
12
Complementary Use of Tai Chi Chih Augments Escitalopram Treatment of Geriatric Depression.
Helen Lavretsky, Lily L. Alstein, Richard E. Olmstead, Linda M. Ercoli, Marquertie Riparetti-Brown, Natalie St. Cyr, Michael R. Irwin.
(2011) American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry; 1 DOI: 10.1097/JGP
13
Tai Chi and Postural Stability in Patients with Parkinson's Disease.
Fuzhong Li, Ph.D., Peter Harmer, Ph.D., M.P.H., Kathleen Fitzgerald, M.D., Elizabeth Eckstrom, M.D., M.P.H., Ronald Stock, M.D., Johnny Galver, P.T., Gianni Maddalozzo, Ph.D., and Sara S. Batya, M.D.
(2012) New England Journal of Medicine; 366:511-519 February 9, 2012 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1107911
14
The beneficial effects of Tai Chi Chuan on blood pressure and lipid profile and anxiety status in a randomized controlled trial.
Tsai, J.C., Wang, W.H., Chan, P., Lin, L.J., Wang, C.H., Tomlinson, B., Hsieh, M.H., Yang, H.Y., & Liu, J.C.
(2003) Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine; 9, 747-754
15
Preliminary study of the effect of Tai Chi and Qigong medical exercise on indicators of metabolic syndrome and glycaemic control in adults with raised blood glucose levels.
Liu X, Miller YD, Burton NW, Brown WJ.
University of Queensland
(2009)British Journal of Sports Medicine; 43(11):840-844
16
Effectiveness Study of the Tai Chi 4 Health & Balance (TC4HB) Program
Baker, Andrew R
Movement Arts Institute
(2012)
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