Effect of Chinese Traditional Exercise on Reducing Fall Risk among Aging People: a single-blind randomized trial

Abstract This study was designed to determine the effect of 12 weeks of the Chinese traditional exercise, the Dao Yin Regime on reducing fall risk in aging population (>60 years). The exclusion criteria for individuals were as follows: 1) were under 60 years; 2) were unable to read and write; 3) had any acute cardiovascular disease in the past month; 4) had any diagnosed disorder of balance function; 5) had visual problems; 6) had hearing problems; 7) had taken drugs that could lead to dizzy. 8) had regular exercising over 6 months. We novelly tried not to exclude people who take sleeping pills since it has already become a normal phenomenon, we also stipulated that people who live alone should be considered serious issues. We planned to recruit 90 people by calculating at the beginning, but in the end, 93 participants were recruited. Every person received a complete fall risk screening process and they were divided into low-risk (30), moderate-risk (29), high-risk (34) based on the STEADI screening toolkit. The age features in each group were: 80.63±6.83(low-risk),83.38±5.89(moderate-risk) and 82.12±5.64(high-risk), and the sex distribution were: male:14(45.16%) and female:17(54.84%) in the low-risk group, male:8(27.59%) and female:21(72.41%) in the moderate-risk group, male:9(26.47%) and female:25(73.53%) in the high-risk group. The exercise program was set 90min in every training session, and was repeated 3 times a week. Every training session started with 10 min warm-up activity, followed by the standing training, which lasted approximately 40 min, and the last was dynamic training, which contained 12 movements lasting 40 min, with a 5 min cool down activity in the end. The entire training program lasted 12 weeks. The methods to evaluate of the effects included demographic, physiological, and psychological aspects, gait characteristics were the main indices used to assess the effects, the within- and between-group differences were analyzed via paired t-test and chi-test. In the gait characteristics, only the low-risk group showed distinct decline in TUG test (p<0.01). The precise reason of why this outcome was not clear, but there was a small improvement in the participants’ physical function and also the frailty situation improved. In this study, we found that low educational background was not an essential issue on increasing fall risk for old people(p<0.01). Since this was the first attempt on investigate the effect of the Dao Yin Regime on reducing fall risk among old people, some limitations remain, and more studies are needed.