Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in older people practicing Tai Chi -Comparison of the HRQOL with the national standards for age-matched controls

Abstract

Aim: We assessed health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of community-dwelling older people who practiced Tai Chi in a cross-sectional study using the MOS 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36, Japanese version) .
Methods: SF-36 and another questionnaire about age, sex, experience with Tai Chi, were distributed to 903 people who were above 65 years old and belonged to the Japan Health Tai Chi Association. Of these, 804 people responded (89.04%) . From the SF-36, we used the sub-scores for physical functioning (PF) , physical role (PR) , bodily pain (BP) , general health (GH) , vitality (VT) , social functioning (SF) , role emotional (RE) , and mental health (MH) . These sub-scores were compared with those obtained from age-matched national standards for groups 60 to 69 years old and 70 to 80 years old respectively (n=1.040) .
Results: The 60- to 69-year-old subjects had significantly higher PF (p<0.01) , GH (p<0.05) , and MH (p<0.01) than the national averages. For the 70- to 80-year old subjects, PF (p<0.01) , PR (p<0.01) , BP (p<0.05) , GH (p<0.01) , VT (p<0.01) , RE (p<0.01) , and MH (p<0.01) were significantly higher than the national averages. The number of years and the frequency of practicing Tai Chi statistically significantly correlated with MH and PF, and GH and PF, respectively.
Conclusion: The HRQOL of the people who practiced Tai Chi was better than age-matched national standards. Although the number of years and the frequency of practicing Tai chi statistically significantly correlated with the sub-scores of the HRQOL, the adjusted (R²) were low.