Traditional Korean Medicine-Based Forest Therapy Programs Providing Electrophysiological Benefits for Elderly Individuals

Abstract

We aimed to develop forest therapy programs (FTPs) to prevent dementia and related health problems in the elderly population, with the assumption that health benefits are FTP-type specific and depend on the participant’s psychophysiological traits. For this purpose, we developed two distinct FTPs, namely, a guided-breathing meditation program (BP) and a walking program (WP); we adopted the approach of Sasang constitutional (SC) medicine, which categorizes individuals into one of three SC types (SC1, SC2, or SC3) for medical care. The FTPs ran 11 sessions over 11 weeks. We recruited 29/31/28 participants who were 65 years of age or older for the BP/WP/control groups, respectively; obtained electrophysiological measurements via electroencephalogram (EEG), heart rate variability (HRV), and bioimpedance; and analyzed the intervention effects with analysis of covariance. Compared with the control, the BP and WP resulted in benefits for neural activity and parasympathetic nervous activity (PNA), respectively, and both FTPs yielded distinct beneficial effects on bioimpedance. Constitution-specific effects were also present. The SC1- and SC2-type participants gained positive effects in neural activity from the BP and WP, respectively. The SC3-type participants showed improvements in PNA from the WP. In conclusion, for older individuals, both programs conferred health benefits that would help prevent dementia, and the benefits were program-specific and constitution-specific.

Declining Trends of Heart Rate Variability According to Aging in Healthy Asian Adults

“…In 2019, HRV was suggested as a useful marker for disease prevention in the elderly (Tan et al, 2019). The authors of this study have also shown that the HRV indices, which were measured with the same instruments and protocols as those in this study, significantly increased after therapy in forest, resulting in a positive effect (Yi et al, 2019).…”

Negative effect of methyl bromide fumigation work on the central nervous system

“…Recently, thanks to the development of IT technology, a convenient and high quality low-channel wireless EEG measurement system has been widely used [34,35]. The authors of this study have shown that two-channels EEG systems, measured at prefrontal region, show reliable data quality and significant clinical results [36][37][38]. With two-channels EEG system, the authors have also shown that MDF and ATR are correlated negatively with the MMSE scores of elderly people (total = 496, males = 163, females = 331) [36] Correlations between EEG changes and neuroimaging findings have been reported in many studies as well.…”

Psycho-Electrophysiological Benefits of Forest Therapies Focused on Qigong and Walking with Elderly Individuals

“…Some forest therapies conducted for the elderly population are based on or run in combination with walking, physical exercise, cognitive intervention, and social activity [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. The reported benefits include effects on blood pressure, arterial stiffness, pulmonary function, salivary cortisol level, quality of life, depression and anxiety, mood state, and blood biomarkers related to cardiovascular disease [ 6 , 25 , 27 , 28 , 29 ].…”