Long-term Tai Chi practitioners have superior body stability under dual task condition during stair ascent

Stair walking contributed to 26% of self-reported falls and become the leading cause of accidental death for the elderly. The risk of fall increases while performing a cognitive task, like talking and/or reasoning.

Our work aimed to found out whether body stability under physical-cognitive dual task(DT) condition during stair ascent is superior among long-term Tai Chi (TC) practitioners.

Fifteen healthy, elderly long-term TC practitioners and fifteen no exercise(NE) practitioners were asked to walking ascent the stairs under single task(ST) and DT conditions in this cross-sectional study. Vicon motion analysis system and Kistler force plates were used synchronously to collect data. Ninety-five% confidence intervals, effect size and statistical power were calculated for each dependent variable to confirm significant difference.

Compared with NE practitioners, TC practitioners had a lower head inclination angle, trunk inclination angle, hip angle, laterial impulse and center of mass-center of pressure(COM-COP)ap/ml separation, a higher ankle angle and loading rate under DT condition; TC practitioners had a lower head inclination angle, trunk inclination angle, higher ankle angle, loading rate and COM-COPml separation under ST condition. Compared with under ST condition, TC practitioners increased in minimum foot clearance, NE practitioners increased in laterial impulse and COM-COPml separation under DT condition. Under DT condition, body stability decreased among NE practitioners, while TC practitioners remained unchanged.

At present, there is no drug therapy proven to delay preclinical cognitive deterioration, it would be great helpful for the elderly if TC was been proved to improve their performance under cognitive related conditions.