The author invented the autonomous rehabilitation program and applied to the United States Patent office as ’Method for managing exercise for function recovery and muscle strengthening.’ It was patented under United States Patent number 7153250 in 2006 and named the ‘Takizawa method’. It enables all the patients in the group to rehabilitate in individual correspondence, including the elderly and handicapped, which require extensive physical therapy to recover, improve and/or strengthen a body’s impaired functions simultaneously through the supervision of just one physical therapist. The importance of this patent has increased today since the effect to the cerebral function of motivative exercise has become clearer. In addition, it contributes to the continuance of independence for elderly people and disabled elderly who show a remarkable increase in every country in the world recently and will continue in the future. This research clears how to invent and the outline of the contents of this invention to do.

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Because of a growing elderly population and a declining birthrate, more elderly are needing nursing care, and the workload for doctors is growing heavier. Therefore, it’s necessary to save labor by using an at-home device to aid nursing. We focus on a device called Patakoro that can stretch and flex the knee joint, and plantar flex and dorsiflex the ankle joint. With electromyography and the Patakoro device, we constructed a system that can increase people’s walking abilities in motivation exercise. This motivation exercise can help paralytic people to strengthen their paralytic side by practicing with the non-paralytic side leg. As a result, we found that there is a significant difference in muscle activity within three sitting positions in which the height of the chair is placed at different levels.

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Parkinson’s disease is underlined by insufficient neuronal dopamine (DA) content. DA is influential for breathing, particularly for hypoxic ventilatory responses, at both central and peripheral carotid body level. There are reasons to believe that breathing might be impaired in PD. We tested this hypothesis in the rat reserpine model of parkinsonism. Ventilation and its responses were recorded in a plethysmograph in conscious rats before and after the induction of parkinsonic symptoms. The findings are that the ventilatory hypoxic responses were substantially reduced in parkinsonism. The likely mechanism of reduced ventilation seems the missing stimulatory element of central DA. The study suggests that breathing rehabilitative exercise, possibly combined with home oxygen therapy, might be a potential countermeasure for deteriorating bodily and cognitive symptoms in parkinsonism.

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The present study aimed to examine whether abdominal obesity and different postures (sitting or supine) affected the cough capacities of middle-aged and elderly women. Method: Twenty-four middle-aged and elderly women with (n = 10; obese group) or without (n = 14; non-obese group) abdominal obesity were included. We evaluated changes in vital capacity (VC) and cough peak flow (CPF) in sitting and supine positions. Results: CPF and VC were significantly lower in the supine versus the seated position in both the non-obese and obese groups. Although no difference was found in VC or CPF between the groups in either position, decreases in both VC and CPF consequent to a change from seated to supine were greater in the obese versus the non-obese group (-5.1 ± 4.4% vs. -3.7 ± 5.3% for VC and -10.8 ± 3.0% vs. -6.7 ± 5.6% for CPF, respectively; p < 0.05). In the obese group, the decrease in CPF with supination correlated with the waist circumference (r = 0.64, p < 0.05). Conclusion: Our results suggest that cough capacity in the supine position was more affected in the subjects with abdominal obesity because their diaphragmatic resistance was further increased by supination consequent to excessive abdominal fat contents.

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This study, conducted in March 2012, involved a questionnaire survey of parents of children with physical disabilities. The self-reported questionnaire contained 30 items on the types of schools the children attended, as well as the children’s ambulatory ability, frequency of participation in physical education classes, and status of participation in sports activities other than physical education classes. A total of 90 valid survey responses were obtained. The participation rate in physical education classes exceeded 88% in all schools, and included students who were restricted in the types of sports they could play. Many of the children who attended general public schools participated in sports activities other than physical education classes, while many of those who attended special schools had no experience of participating in such activities. We analyzed the data on 78 mothers with the phenomenological approach, and were able to classify their feelings about sports participation into the following 3 exhaustive descriptions: “a sense of alienation,” “the presence of expectations for the child’s growth,” and “concern over negative impact brought on by new challenges.” The results suggest the need to provide support for sports participation among older children, and to build a support system that can prevent mothers from developing a sense of alienation.

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The well-being of leaders represents a complex responsibility for their private doctors. Bernardino Ramazzini, known as the founder of occupational medicine, drew the attention on the essential role of a doctor to preserve the health of social leaders and other people form the upper class society. This paper reviews Ramazzini’s observations, from the early seventeenth century, on the health of high ranking people of his time. To teach these people how to keep their health was mentioned in one of Ramazzini’s rather unknown work. His work focused on the role of the doctor and on the particular preventative measures for the health and the treatment of high ranking people. From this point of view, the book gained a more contemporary meaning. Living in a healthy environment, keeping moderation in eating and drinking, having a daily exercise schedule, a good personal hygiene and a healthy sleep schedule, and cultivating self-control are the preventative key points exposed in this book. The key to success is the continuous medical education of the private doctors. These rules are still valid today and not only for the health of the leaders or people of wealthy backgrounds.

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TAKIZAWA, Taki Shigeo
Mieczyslaw Pokorski
GELU ONOSE
Yoshiyasu Takefuji
Takuji Shiraswa
Hajime Takada
Toshiyuki Tanaka
Hiroshi Nagasawa
Camillo Di Giulio
RaoulSaggini
Jose Leon-Carrion
Yoshiko Morita

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