A Study on the Effects of the Stretching Exercise on Senile Asylum People’s Physical Strength, Activities of Daily Life and Quality of Life
Authors: Kim Yeo Ok 
Published: September 2024

Senile people can be easily subject to diseases as their physical functions are we.ikened by aging. At the same time, their physical fitness will also be disturbed, causing them to rely more on others'sup pert for thrie instrumental activities of daily life.The rsult. will be deteriorated quality of lite. On the other hand, senile people frequently suffer from one or more chronic degenerative diseases, so it may well be necessary for them to exercise regularly and manage their body in order to pi event their physical functions from being degenerated further. With such a conception in mind, the researcher encouraged the senile people accommodated in an asyluni to continue to be engaged in the stretching exercise regularly. It was conceived that the senile people who may suffer a musculir contraction due to their long sedentary living rould rely on the stretching exercise which can be preformed easily and safety without using any exercise tool. With such a conception in mind, this study was aimed at testing the instrumental activities of daily living and quality of life and thereby, suggesting a strtching exercise model to improve their health. To this end, each 15 senile people were sampled as test and con trol group, respectively, from an asylum located at Songpa-gu, Seoul. The two groups were subject to a strtching exercise program foi 8 weeks from April to May 29, 1998. The results of testing the hypotheses can be summarized as follows :1. It was found that the stretching exercise would have an effect of improving senil people's physi cal fitness. Such facoirs of their physical fitness as grasping strength (left and right hands), ab dominal muscular stregth, flexibility and balanc ing ability were all improved. Therefore it is conceived that this stretching exercise program is suitable to improvement of senile people's physi cal fitness.2. Although the strtching exercise showed some ef fects on senile people's such instrumental activi ties of daily living as home keeping and cleaning works as the exercise program processed, there could be found no overall significant effects.3. Although the stretching exercise had some ef fects on senile people’s such quality of life as emotional condition, self-respect, physical con dition and function as the exercise program processed, the effects were not significant in stat istical terms. Such findings may suggest that a short-term strtching exercise alone may not be sufficient to improve senile people’s quality of life involving their physical, emotional and socio economic conditions. Summing up, the strtching ex ercise may help to improve senile people's physi cal fitness, out it cannot improve their quality of life significantly. The re foie, it may well be necessary to extend an emotional support to the senile people who feel lonely only to fail in despair or suffer from the sense of impending dealt h.Nevertheless, those sample senile people who participated in this stretching exercise program reported that they were pleased to feel their health improved with their joints softened.Lastly, it is hoped that future studies would de velop a longer exercise program together with various emotional support ones.