Shingles Prevention: Tai Chi
UCLA just completed a study that demonstrates that elderly people
benefit from learning Tai Chi. In fact, they improved their immune
system much greater than their elderly counterparts. Specifically these
people showed to improve their immune system against shingles. 
From the UCLA website:
"The 25-week study, which involved a group of 112 adults ranging in age from 59 to 86, showed that practicing tai chi chih alone boosted immunity to a level comparable to having received the standard vaccine against the shingles-causing varicella zoster virus. When tai chi chih was combined with the vaccine, immunity reached a level normally seen in middle age. The report appears in the April issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, currently online.
The results, said lead author Michael Irwin, the Norman Cousins Professor of Psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, confirm a positive, virus-specific immune response to a behavioral intervention. The findings demonstrate that tai chi chih can produce a clinically relevant boost in shingles immunity and add to the benefit of the shingles vaccine in older adults."
Shingles Prevention: Tai Chi
Posted on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 at 4:47 PM by Sifu Smith
Edited on: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 4:48 PM