Fibromyalgia Sufferers – Try Some Tai Chi

Merely twelve weeks of doing tai chai – a form of weight bearing, low impact, aerobic yet unwinding exercise that involve gradual, placid movements, deep-breathing and meditation – provided respite to long-standing niggling fibromyalgia symptoms and enhanced quality of existence in a scientific study.

In comparison to patients given wellness edification and stretching exercises, tai chi practitioners noted lessening in severity of fibromyalgia symptoms. Moreover tai chi helped in promoting sound sleep, a sense of betterment, lesser pains, greater energy levels and had improved health physically as well as emotionally, according to research investigator Doctor Chenchen Wang from the Tufts Univ. School of Medicine.

The investigators were thrilled by the promising outcomes they noticed which far surpassed those in clinical studies for treating fibromyalgia with drug therapies. One arthritic study entrant kept exclaiming that he was pain-free as a result of doing tai chi.

However the reactions differed across several study entrants and ten to twenty percent of patients arbitrarily allotted to tai chi did not find it helpful. Researchers however point out that fifty to sixty percent of the patients did feel an improvement in their condition following 8 weeks of practicing tai chi.

Their condition improved in a slow yet steady pace and those benefiting from tai chi requested the investigators to prolong it when the twenty-four week trial concluded.

The study was comparatively small-scaled with sixty-six patients segregated equally in-between the wellness education plus stretching and tai chi sets. Wang states that outcomes need to be corroborated in large-scaled studies.

However, Harward Medical School Doctor Gloria Yeh states that fibromyalgia sufferers need not wait till the outcomes of these trials come out. Yeh concurs that tai chi could be the best exercise choice for fibromyalgia sufferers and totally safe and effectual. It is the ideal choice for fibromyalgia patients who have failed to get reprieve from conservative treatments or are on the lookout for what else could be done to tackle this problem.

Tai Chi for Arthritic and Fibromyalgia Patients

Tai chi also dubbed moving meditation is believed to improve energy flow throughout the body that leads to improved wellness and wide-ranging health gains like:

• Improvement in dexterity, suppleness, body-conditioning and strength.
• Lowered pains and rigidity.
• Improved balance and lesser likelihood of falls.
• Improved sleep patterns.
• Improved alertness, tranquillity and general feeling of well-being.

The fundamental principle is a healthful body needs a strong mind and tai chi is, in essence a mind-body exercise steeped in primeval Chinese mores and beliefs.

In the last ten years, Wang’s group observed that tai chi assisted fibromyalgia sufferers in tiding over an array of long-standing health problems which impelled them to start the fibromyalgia scientific study and enrolling sixty-six fibromyalgia sufferers for eleven years on the whole.

The study entrants were notified that they were part of duo varying exercise regimes wherein one set would be receiving nutritional erudition. Wang states that majority of the patients were anticipating being part of the erudition plus exercise set which they were made to deem was a more intricate intercession. In actuality that was the placebo set who were given two sessions per week of hour-lasting wellness erudition plus stretching moves.

The other set trained under tai chi guru Ramel Rones from ‘Mind-Body Therapies’, Boston for an hour’s time taking place two times in a week for twelve weeks. These sessions entailed an explication of the tai chi conjecture and instructions in ten types of the typical soft-gentle Yang method of tai chi. These patients were additionally trained to meditate, do breathing methods and relax. Patients were advised to do tai chi at their homes for a minimum of twenty minutes.

Not just fibromyalgia sufferers but even arthritic patients benefited from tai chi who part of the trial conducted in the Univ. of N.Carolina by Leigh Callahan and associates.

Study entrants from the trial helmed by Callahan as well as Wang did not halt the intake of prescription drugs, though candidates from Wang’s trial cited lesser frequent intake of their medicines.

Callahan points out that tai chi is not intended for replacing other therapies though can be an effectual adjunct.

Callahan and Wang point out that the intricate amalgamation of mind, spirit, theoretical and physical practices is what makes tai chi so beneficial.