Chair-based exercise, and chair yoga in particular, improves quality of life for seniors with advanced dementia, a small study has found.
Participants with moderate to severe dementia were assigned to one of three interventions. These included chair yoga, music therapy or regular chair exercise. Group members attended 45-minute sessions twice weekly for 12 weeks.
Nearly all study participants were fully able to engage in the interventions, but the chair-yoga group results stood out, the researchers said. Those participants showed significant improvements in quality of life measures when compared to the music intervention group. In addition, both the chair-yoga and regular chair-exercise groups showed quality of life improvements over time, while the music therapy group declined, said Juyoung Park, Ph.D., of Florida Atlantic University.
Levels of depression were affected as well. The chair yoga and chair-based exercise groups showed lower depression at all test points throughout the study when compared to the music intervention group.
Chair yoga was of particular interest to the researchers. They noted that although participants did not understand the teacher’s instructions due to cognitive impairment, they were able to follow the poses, said Park.
“It is fascinating that, although some participants showed mild levels of agitation or wandering in the intervention room prior to the yoga session, they became calm and attentive when the yoga interventionist started demonstrating yoga poses,” she said.
More than half of the study subjects (67.7%) were taking medication to manage dementia symptoms.
The study was published in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease & Other Dementias.
