Traditional Chinese Medicine Techniques Impact on the Quality of Life of the Older People

Abstract

The focus of this study was to determine the potential influence of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practices on the quality of life (QOL) of the elderly. Elders should be interviewed as reporters on the quality of their own lives. Two non-selected volunteer groups of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) municipality residents were studied: a control group (36 older adults) who did not use TCM and a group participating in an experiment (28 older people) that did use TCM at the ABACO/Sohaku-in Institute in Brazil. The WHOQOL-Old questionnaire, developed by the World Health Organization, was employed, as were descriptive statistical approaches such as mean and standard deviation. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to ensure that the distribution was normal. Furthermore, for the intergroup comparison, the Student t test was used to aspects 2, 4, 5, 6, and total score, and the Mann-Whitney U rank test was applied to facets 1 and 3, both tests intended to examine the P value difference between experimental and control groups. The degree of significance used was 95% (P >0.05). The experimental group had the greatest overall and individual QOL scores. It was determined that TCM might improve the QOL of the elderly. The overall conclusion of this study, which reports a greater QOL for the old who receive TCM treatment, is beneficial for the adoption of TCM procedures in the West, at least among the senior population.