Effect of Tai Chi Exercise on the Stress of Elderly Women With Hypertension

Hypertension or high blood pressure is one of the most common chronic diseases among the geriatrics having a strong association with psychological factors such as perceived stress. Aerobic exercises are effective in the prevention and treatment of hypertension and stress management. In the same regard, this paper is an attempt to investigate the effect of Tai Chi exercise on the stress of Iranian older women with hypertension.
This clinical trial with pre and posttest quasi-experimental design was conducted on 64 elderly women with hypertension at two elderly care centers in Tehran. This study included 8-form Tai Chi exercise for a period of six weeks. For collecting data, two questionnaires with demographic characteristics and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) were used, and for analyzing data, descriptive and inferential statistics were employed in SPSS-PC V21 software.
The results showed that there was no significant difference in perceived stress in both experimental and control groups, before and after the intervention. The results of repeated measures ANOVA also showed that the mean of perceived stress score before and after intervention was not statistically significant (P = 0.557 and 0.489).
Since the 8-form Tai Chi exercise is a safe intervention for the elderlies has led to a significant difference in the level of perceived stress among the elderly women, further studies are suggested to find a suitable and effective style of this exercise.