Cypress Pointe Pain Management

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This study investigated the effects of 5-Form, Yang Style Tai Chi (TC) on balance confidence, balance performance, functional strength, mobility, and incidence of falls among individuals with or at risk for developing osteoporosis. This was a pilot outcomes study in which participants served as their own controls. Thirty-one independent, community-dwelling women (mean age of 67.3 years) attended TC sessions twice a week for 12 weeks and practiced at least 1 day a week on their own. A specific TC instruction video was used to facilitate home practice. Baseline, immediate postintervention, and 6 and 12 months postintervention data were recorded. Outcome measures included the Activities-specific Balance Confidence (ABC) Scale, One-Legged Stance Test (OLST) for both legs, Repeated Chair Stands (RCS), and the Timed Up and Go Test (TUG). Exercise performance and falls were tracked during the study by using daily diaries. Balance performance, functional strength, and mobility significantly improved (p < 0.05) immediately postintervention. Most benefits were sustained at 6 months, but only functional strength and mobility remained improved at 12 months postintervention. Most participants reported exercising at the 6- and 12-month follow-up. However, very few individuals continued to practice TC on a regular basis (more than once a week) beyond the 12-week intervention. Balance confidence or incidence of falls did not improve.

The history of pain treatment likely started in the cradle of mankind, as the experience of pain from many causes presumably had an aversive dimension comparable in its ranking to elementary sensations and motivations such as hunger, thirst, maintenance of body temperature, and sexuality-all vital for individual and genetic survival. Thus, pain certainly was among the drives to create social behavior and medicine-these functions still are inherent in pain. The period of history from 1500, as considered here, is dominated by the emergence of science. The exploration of the inside of the human body found the brain to be the seat of sensations, emotions, and behavior, and this progress included pain as well, slowly disabusing it from the magic elements and demons still inherent from early times. The rational phase of medicine began and also included new concepts of pain as first conceived by Descartes. The treatment and prevention of pain became a strong motive of medicine, with new approaches in drug treatment, physical applications such as electricity, and discoveries of psychosocial implementations. During the nineteenth century the most important breakthroughs in pain treatment included general and local anesthesia as well as analgesic drugs from morphine to anti-inflammatory agents. They succeeded in taking the terror out of the agonizing pain of surgery and dramatic courses of diseases. Today's natural extension of the medical success in controlling acute pain may be seen in the period of pain medicine aimed at understanding and preventing chronic pain.