Comparing the effects of time of day on balance performance in elderly

Abstract

Introduction: During aging, some changes occur in all organs that led to increase impairment in balance meanwhilethe circadian cycle also isn’t ineffective. The aim of this study was to detective the effect of a balance trainingprogram in the morning and afternoon on static and dynamic balance in healthy elderly.Materials and Method: In this quasi-experimental study 24 healthy elderly subjects (n=24)with no history ofregular exercise (68.7 ±5.5 years old, height, 1.6 m±8.2, weight (68.4±8.9) kg) were selected to purpose in thisstudy. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups balance exercises in the morning (n=6)and afternoon(n=6) groups. To assess static balance, single leg standing balance test and to estimate the dynamic balance test,Stars balance test (SEBT) was used. Statistical analysis using paired-T and-T independent test at 5% level wereperformed using SPSS version 20 (P>0.05).Result: The significant difference was seen between the dominant leg static balance - open eyes, dominant leg staticbalance - open eyes, dominant leg static balance - closed eyes and non-dominant leg static balance - closed eyes inthe morning and afternoon (P0.05), so that theafternoon exercises didn’t have a greater influence on dynamic balance in elderly people.Discussion: It can be concluded that, balance exercise isn't effective in the afternoon than in the morning, on staticbalance. The difference in dynamic balance at the time of the test subjects were not observed, so that a dynamicbalance in the evening than in the morning did not show much difference. Therefore, a special time for improvingbalance in older adults has not been determined.

Keywords

• elderly
• static and dynamic balance