Deans' stroke musings: Current trends in tai chi for stroke rehabilitation

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Current trends in tai chi for stroke rehabilitation

I took a tai chi class once although I had to modify a lot of the upper arm movements to use the good arm to assist the bad arm into position.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095754815000241

doi:10.1016/j.jtcms.2014.12.001

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Open Access funded by Beijing University of Chinese Medicine

Under a Creative Commons license

Abstract

Background

There are an increasing number of studies focusing on the effect of tai chi for different diseases. As a special form of physical activity, tai chi may be beneficial for the rehabilitation of stroke, a leading cause of disability worldwide.

Objective

This review summarizes the existing literature on the potential benefits of tai chi for stroke rehabilitation and offers recommendations for future research.

Methods

Studies on the biomechanics and physiology of tai chi for stroke rehabilitation are reviewed. Research on tai chi for stroke rehabilitation and related diseases are summarized. Finally, the shortcomings of existing studies and recommendations for future studies are discussed.

Conclusions

Tai chi appears to be beneficial for stroke rehabilitation. But reporting quality of existing studies are sub-optimal. Future trials should define tai chi style, apply rigorous methodology to sample size calculation, randomization, recruiting criteria, and outcome measures. To avoid inadequacies during the research and reporting processes, investigators may wish to follow CONSORT guidelines and refer to well-conducted clinical studies on tai chi.