The Effects of Yoga on the Quality of Life and Functional Performance of the Community Dwelling Older People in Hong Kong

Yoga has a remarkably long history originating in India. Numerous studies have shown its benefits to health. Although yoga has gained increasing popularity in Hong Kong, no study has explored its effectiveness to the older people. Given the aging population, exploring the impact of yoga on the physical and psychosocial well-being of older people in Hong Kong is worthwhile to contribute improvement to their quality of life. This study aims to examine the effects of yoga on the quality of life and functional performance of the community dwelling older people in Hong Kong. A 12-week quasi-experimental study was conducted with a two-group pretest-posttest control group design based on subject preferences. The subjects were selected based on the criteria that they must be community dwelling older people aged 60 and above, novices to yoga, able to speak Cantonese; and are cognitively sound, with a score of at least 6 as assessed by the Abbreviated Mental Test (AMT). The assessment tools included Timed Up-and-go Test (TUGT) and One-leg Stand Test (OLST) to measure the functional performance and the Short Form (36) Health Survey (SF-36) was used to measure the quality of life. Based on the intention-to-treat analysis, a medium effect size of 0.5 with a power of 80% was used to estimate the number of subjects. A total of 71 subjects were included in the intervention group, and 64 subjects were included in the control group from 5 community centres. A pilot study was conducted among 40 subjects to test the feasibility of the study and its intervention effect. The data for the main study were collected from July 2011 to January 2012. All assessments were conducted face-to-face with subjects before the yoga classes and one week after the completion of the programme. Approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the recruited centres and the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the demographic characteristics of the subjects. With the confounding effects being controlled and adjusted, multivariate regression was used to determine if differences exist between the outcome measures of the intervention and control groups across two measurement periods. All other statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 19.0. All statistical tests were two-sided, and a p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. A total of 127 completed the main study, with attrition rate of 5.9%. The average attendance rate of the participants in the intervention group was 85.1%. After 12 weeks of intervention, significant improvements were found in the overall physical (p=0.015) and mental components (p=0.023) in the summary measures of SF-36 between the intervention and control groups. Significant improvement was likewise observed in TUGT (p<0.001) but not in OLST results (p=0.438). Significant improvements were found in the quality of life and gait speed of the participants after 12 weeks of yoga intervention. The low attrition rate and high attendance rate proved that yoga is accepted by older generations; hence, positive information about the benefits of this exercise should be promoted. Further studies are advised to explore the effectiveness of yoga for older people with chronic diseases.