Insights & Discussion
All schools of Tai Chi chuan can improve the mental health of the elderly.
Tai Chi's potential mechanisms include reducing anxiety, relieving depression and stress, enhancing pulmonary and cardiovascular function, enhancing immunity and improving quality of life.
Discover Related Insights
Our findings support the use of tai chi as a treatment for people with arthritis and potentially for low back pain.
2017 Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal Effectiveness of Tai Chi for Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain Conditions: Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Amanda Hall, Bethan Copsey, Helen Richmond, Jacqueline Thompson, Manuela Ferreira, Jane Latimer, et al.
Systematic Review
Our findings support the use of tai chi as a treatment for people with arthritis and potentially for low back pain. However, we have only very low-quality or no evidence to suggest that it is as effective as, or more effective than, any other treatment for these populations. With no direct comparison of tai chi to other treatments, we can only speculate that, as our findings appear to be within a similar range to those reported for other commonly used exercise regimens for musculoskeletal conditions, tai chi could produce similar effects when compared. Thus, we cannot provide useful or confirmatory evidence to recommend this approach over others used in clinical practice settings until a robust, direct comparison study has been conducted.
Tai Chi could be an effective alternative and/or complementary approach to existing therapies for people with fatigue.
2017 PLOS One Does Tai Chi relieve fatigue? A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials Yu Xiang, Liming Lu, Xiankun Chen, Zehuai Wen
Systematic Review Cancer Fatigue Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
The overall aggregated result showed that Tai Chi achieved better gains in relieving fatigue compared to the control interventions. For the subgroup analysis, Tai Chi was more beneficial for cancer-related fatigue. However, for multiple sclerosis-related fatigue, age-related fatigue, there were no significant difference between two groups. Tai Chi improved fatigue greater than conventional treatment and low-impact exercise control, while no difference was observed comparing with health education control. The length between ≤ 3 months and > 3 months and the frequency between < 5 times a week and ≥ 5 times a week, the pooled results indicated that they all have significant difference. However, in the duration≤ 60 minutes, Tai Chi was improved fatigue greater. In the duration > 60 minutes, there were no difference between two groups. So, the duration≤ 60 minutes may be better than > 60 minutes.