Health, Wellbeing, Competence and Aging

The following sections are included:

• Contents

• Contributors

• Preface to Series

• Preface to Volume 6

Aging is a normal physiological process. The factors affecting aging are extremely complex, involving innate genetic, pathological, social-psychological and environmental factors.

Chinese Medicine takes a philosophical view on health that is considered a harmonious balanced state of physiological functions. Maintaining this balance is an effective way of preventing diseases. The balance is favorably maintained through a careful choice of dietary components and a smart practice of exercises which go beyond the usual concept of training muscles and physical abilities. Now that life expectancy is ever increasing, the awareness of wellness and disease prevention has gained universal interests. Apparently, the popular concerns of health promotion viz. cardiovascular, anti-aging, bone health, etc. can be satisfied through a Chinese way of non-aerobic exercises and practical selection of health supplements.

This contribution deals with the underestimated relevance of accepted scientific fundamentals of Western Medicine on its efficiency. These fundamentals restrict in principle the options to promote aging in competence, health and wellbeing; therefore, a scientific technique is presented to extend the given performance. This “Extended View” opens the door to additional hints which can be given by Oriental scientific offers.

Hong Kong is a city in the Special Administrative Region of China with a population of seven million living in a space of 1104 square kilometers. It has the longest life expectancy for men in the world while for women, life expectancy is second only to Japan. By 2036 those aged 65 and over are projected to form one quarter of the total population. This demographic change has raised concerns regarding the anticipated increase in burden of chronic diseases and disability as well as worsening mental health in our society. To counterbalance this somewhat pessimistic view, the CADENZA project was started in 2006, to highlight how our society can meet these challenges in a positive way, emphasizing the person-centered perspective and importance of the non-medical approach. This project was initiated by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, partnered by tertiary institutions and non-government organizations, and consists of four major components: public education training, community projects, and leadership training. Under this program a community center (Jockey club CADENZA Hub) has been established, for the soon-to-be old as well as the elderly, their carers and volunteers, adopting Eastern and Western philosophies in a trans-disciplinary, trans-cultural and holistic approach. The services provided by the Hub broadly responds to the three stages of the aging process: health promotion, health maintenance and prevention of decline, applying behavioral modification principles; optimizing control and maintaining function for those with chronic diseases emphasizing self-management techniques; and providing physical and psychological support for those with frailty and their carers using a case management approach. The center provides a venue for further downstream diffusion of programs that have been developed and evaluated to meet service needs from the users’ perspective to be integrated into current service provisions.

The demographic change, its origins and its challenges for politics and medicine, is one of the most important topics in actual health-related research. Regrettably most of this research neglects non-clinical aspects and is not willing to consider soft facts like self-referenced well-being or perceived health. Bringing together actual health-related findings from different disciplines working in life satisfaction research, an introduction and overview on the current state of discussion with strong focus on the elderly shall be provided — it aims to show that life satisfaction is one of the most decisive factors for healthy aging and longevity.

Core aspects are the amazing relationship between well-being, self-referenced health and classical parameters like life expectancy, the question on the impact of money and the satisfaction paradox of the old.

In 1999 the theme for the International Year of Older Persons was ‘A Society for All Ages’. As a contribution and a practicable answer the Department of Geriatrics — Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg (Head HR Prim. Dr. Peter Erhart) presented the primary preventive teaching project ‘One step towards old age’. We targeted all generations to participate in social commitments and lifelong learning. The first step involved the young generation.

The main element of this project is a three-hour adventure world “The Arena of Daily Living” located at the Department of Geriatrics. Based on a new scientific and didactic approach we started to raise awareness for an unacquainted period of life. The participants work with special devices designed to experience old age by imitation.

Our message is: ‘Old age is not a handicap to man but man is a handicap to old age’. A short description of the workshop explains how to achieve key priorities like highlighting a positive view of aging, understanding the meaning of “WE” in a society, knowledge on the aging process in connection with environmental challenges, awareness of the stressful combination of physiological changes and circumstances that put older persons at risk.

In 2002 we extended the project to the next two generations. Modules have been fitted into university teaching, nursing schools and academies. Special attention is given to geragogics and a cross-generation dialog. Lectures, meetings and trainings support independent living. Our homepage (www.zgb.at) serves as a platform for all generations.

Up till today, about 12,000 participants have attended our project.

The article is a review of ideas in Russian gerontology and geriatrics for 250 years. Most prominent concepts and figures in medical, biological and philosophical aspects of aging studies are shown, with accents made on immunoneuroendocrine mechanisms of senescence. The author’s own studies, with reference to autoimmune thyroiditis, inherited disorders of connective tissue and accelerated aging are briefly characterized.

In the face of the aging population worldwide, the World Health Organization has advocated the life course approach to promoting active aging. In Hong Kong, the Elderly Commission is the advisory body on policy for elders and the Elderly Health Service (EHS) has been established in the Department of Health to enhance primary health care for the elderly. An evidence-based approach is adopted in both the clinical service for elders in the 18 Elderly Health Centres (EHC) and in the public health promotion programs delivered by the 18 Visiting Health Teams (VHT), with needs assessment, setting of priorities, and in-built evaluation. In the EHCs, a holistic, continuing and comprehensive approach with multidisciplinary input emphasizing health education and empowerment is shown to be effective for changing health related lifestyle behavioural risk factors and health outcome of elders. Similarly, the VHTs adopt a multi-modality, train-the-trainer, empowerment and skill enhancement approach with multi-disciplinary input, and are effective in making change among the various target groups like elders and elderly homes. Making use of diverse publicity and health promotional methods including production of books for sale, EHS will continue to evolve to meet the changing health needs of the elders in Hong Kong.

About 5000 years, the major traditional medicines were created: Chinese medicine, Ayurveda and Unani, in China, India and the Arab region, respectively.

In order to realize the medical dreams of personalized and preventive medicine, and also to solve problems such as economical and social educational matters, modern Western medicine is integrated with traditional medicine (TM) and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) — collectively termed as integrative medicine. In this chapter, the key elements such as TM, CAM and their models and problems will be discussed.

Medical Resonance Therapy Music® originated from Peter Hubner in Germany using the theory of resonance for applications in clinical settings by his multidisciplinary team of professionals. The sonic (20–2000 Hz) and subsonic frequency (0.034–5 Hz) of resonance music is best delivered through headphones with ear muffs in an undisturbed environment 20 minutes or more twice a day. Therapeutic music synchronizes with cellular physiological rhythm, restores neuro-hormonal balance and rekindles the body ability of auto-healing. It helps in restoring different physiological functions, including the nervous, circulatory, digestive and endocrine systems that have their own rhythms. With the appropriate frequency of music, users enter a state of relaxation that guides the body to adjust its pace to deal with stress, insomnia, anxiety, migraine headache, hypertension, hormonal and immune disorders and other clinical problems. The best known examples were serving victims of the Chernobyl nuclear plant incident and children with hypertension. In Germany nowadays, patients can buy Medical Resonance Therapy Music® CDs from pharmacies based on physician prescriptions for 18 types of common medical symptoms and problems, supported by over five years of positive clinical and scientific evidence.

Medical Resonance Therapy Music® should not be overlooked as its new developments have already expanded to Chinese Medicine like “acu-music” (music of different Meridians), Chiropractic practice (music for Spine health), Ayurvedic Medicine (music of Chakras energy centres), mindfulness based meditation (music of meditation) and education (whole brain nurture, creativity and intelligence). The strength of Western Medicine lies in cure of infectious diseases, surgeries and emergency life-saving. Chinese Medicine is strong in managing sub-health before diseases emerge. Natural Medicine goes back to basics of nature and adopts our self-healing power to promote health. However, Medical Resonance Therapy Music® should be considered as a complementary therapy of health problems, but not replacing evidence-based Western Medicines.

Meditation is a family of practices that cultivate specific psychological states or mental capacities for heightened self-awareness and insight. Neuroscientists have found that regular and sustained meditation has significant structural and functional effects on the brain. Structural and functional neuroimaging have linked meditation to improved regulation of the default network of attention, controlled focus, and sustained attention. Studies have also linked meditation practice with the cultivation of positive emotion. In part because of the evidence that it causes neurobiological changes, support is growing for research on the potential use of meditation for therapies promoting cognitive and affective processing, which should ultimately lift physiological and psychological well-being. Thus far, research outcomes are largely positive and only rarely accompanied by adverse side effects, suggesting that meditation is a promising therapy — and may even help prevent some psychopathologies. Future research should continue to examine the potential healing and restorative effects of meditation.

Mind-body exercise, a form of physical exercise originating in the East with increasing popularity in the West, has a unique characteristic that requires conscious control of each body movement and concurrently maintaining a peaceful and relaxed state of mind during practice. With the ultimate goal of training both the body and the mind, there have been empirical findings supporting the positive effects of mind-body exercises on improving physical health condition (e.g., pulmonary function) as well as cognitive functions (e.g., learning and memory). This chapter will introduce a form of Chinese Chan-based mind-body exercise, namely Shaolin mind-body exercise or Chanwu, which was developed upon the traditional Shaolin Healing Approach. A brief description on some movements of Shaolin mind-body exercise will also be provided. Treatment outcomes based on both clinical observations and cumulative empirical evidence are so far encouraging. Specifically, intervention with the component of Shaolin mind-body exercise has been found to be able to foster a relaxed and attentive mind state of normal adults, significantly improve depressive mood and enhance bowel function and neurophysiological activity of both community-dwelling adults and patients with major depressive disorder. Some clinical cases with severe cognitive impairment have also been assessed to show significant enhancement in their attention, memory, language and executive functions. These positive findings have suggested potential clinical applicability of the Shaolin mind-body exercise as a possible neuropsychological intervention for improving cognitive function and psychological status of patients with various brain disorders or psychiatric illnesses.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is increasing in popularity all over the world. However, due to the high demand for TCM products, quality control becomes a challenge as many formulations have a complicated composition. Moreover, in addition to quantitative control of ingredients, the geographic origin and the species must be identified. Analytical techniques employed so far, including mass spectroscopy, NMR spectroscopy and separation techniques, are all destructive, expensive and time-consuming, and therefore they are not really suitable for high-throughput quality control. For this purpose, near-infrared (NIR) offers novel highly and effective possibilities for a very fast, non-invasive and simultaneous investigation of a manifold of different questions. The present chapter aims to point out the efficiency of modern NIR methodology in addressing the above-mentioned problems through several well-selected examples. Thus, this contribution should help to convince the implementation of such an analytical method in quality control at different stages of the production process.

The following sections are included:

• Index