Short Term Microcurrent Electrical Neuromuscular Stimulation To Improve Muscle Function In The Elderly

Author : Eric Thomas Leach
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 88 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (115 download)

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Download or read book T.R.A.N.S.I.T. Electrical Stimulation to Improve Muscle Quality in Older Individuals written by Eric Thomas Leach and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's elderly population is increasing and healthcare costs are outpacing this growth. As people age, their muscles progressively weaken, often leading to physical disabilities and functional limitations later in life. Eventually, muscle weakness can interfere with a person's ability to complete everyday activities, such as bathing, walking a few blocks down the road, or safely getting up from a chair. For elderly people, maintaining or improving muscle strength helps to maintain the ability to safely complete daily tasks. This ultimately leads to decreased healthcare costs and sustained independence. There are many well-established methods to improve muscle function in elderly people, including endurance exercise, strength training, and flexibility training. All of these modalities of exercise work through a variety of mechanisms to induce specific training effects that enhance muscle function. However, there are other forms of exercise that may provide unique benefits to muscle function that have been less extensively studied; chiefly, sprint exercise. Sprint exercise has been shown to promote an adaptation that has yet to be seen in response to any other form of exercise: improved calcium release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum of skeletal muscle. This adaptation is significant because calcium release within the muscle is an essential step in the process of muscle contraction. Surprisingly, however, sprint exercise is not even mentioned by the American College of Sports Medicine in its recommendations for older individuals. This is likely due to concerns that it would not be well-tolerated due to risks related to high intensity exercise and the stress that it places on the joints. Consequently, it may be of great benefit to develop a physical therapy intervention that could mimic the effects of sprint training for people that cannot safely execute sprint exercise. Such an intervention could be especially beneficial for older individuals, as traditional sprint exercise is seldom recommended. Russ and colleagues recently developed a treatment protocol that induces muscular adaptations in young people that are similar to those caused by sprint exercise. This protocol is based on an established physical therapy intervention known as neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), which works by sending electric current through electrodes to stimulate nerves and activate specific muscles. NMES has been used in both laboratories and physical therapy clinics for decades and is commonly used as a treatment to improve muscle strength or endurance. The protocol developed by Russ et al., hereafter referred to as T.R.A.N.S.I.T. (Therapeutic Rapid Activation of the Neuromuscular System for Interval Training), applies NMES technology in a new way that improves peak rate of calcium release within the muscle (an essential step in muscle activation). This is of particular importance because improved calcium release has only been observed in response to sprint exercise training. Because calcium release declines in aging muscle, we expect that T.R.A.N.S.I.T. will improve muscle function more in elderly people than in young people. Therefore, for my thesis project, I proposed to test the effect of T.R.A.N.S.I.T. on muscle quality (muscle force / muscle size) in older individuals. Due to specific changes in muscles that occur with age, we expected that T.R.A.N.S.I.T. would be of even greater benefit to older individuals than it was to younger individuals.