This study examines whether participation in gardening predicts reduced fall risk and performance on balance and gait-speed measures in older adults. Data on adults age 65 and older (N = 3,237) from the Health and Retirement Study and Consumption and Activities Mail Survey were analyzed. Participants who spent 1 hr or more gardening in the past week were defined as gardeners, resulting in a tot...

[Purpose] This study aimed to investigate the reproducibility and validity of the 50-m walking test. [Subjects] Reproducibility was investigated in 19 community-dwelling elderly women (mean age, 76.3 years), and validity was investigated in 31 community-dwelling elderly individuals (12 men and 19 women; mean age, 75.7 years). [Methods] The time taken to walk 50 m, the time taken to walk each 10...

Objective The 6-min walk test (6MWT) is a simple test that is used to examine the exercise tolerance and outcomes in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Although the 6MWT is useful for assessing exercise tolerance, it is difficult to evaluate time-dependent parameters such as the walking pattern. A modified 6MWT has been devised to assess the walking pattern by calculati...

Background: Ankle-Foot orthoses are used to minimize the impact of weakness in ankle dorsiflexion muscles. The study on different orthotic types defines the optimal design, which effectively improves the users’ mobility. This study investigated the potential benefits and risks of a Dictus-band (flexible orthotic), compared with a thermoplastic (fixed) ankle-foot orthosis on the mobility of indi...

OBJECTIVE To determine if the metabolic cost of the incremental shuttle-walking test protocol is the same as treadmill walking or predicted values of walking-speed equations. SETTING Primary care (community-based cardiac rehabilitation). PARTICIPANTS Eight Caucasian cardiac rehabilitation patients (7 males) with a mean age of 67±5.2 years. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES Oxygen con...

Walking tests, frequently used to document effects of treatment on exercise capacity, have never been standardised. We studied the effects of encouragement on walking test performance in a randomised study that controlled for the nature of the underlying disease, time of day, and order effects. We randomised 43 patients with chronic airflow limitation or chronic heart failure or both to receive...

This study investigated some aspects of the validity of walking speed recording in 15 normal subjects, 16 trans-femoral amputees and 8 knee disarticulation amputees . The variability and test-retest reliability of walking speed and the influence of simultaneous recording of E M G and goniometry on comfortable and fast walking speeds were studied. The variability between sessions was mainly dete...