Over the last few years, we have had the opportunity to work in a more integrated way with health services in our course development. Supported by health and social care practitioners we have been considering how health and social care interact; the cause and effect, the impact and outcomes on a practice level within specific domains.  This interlocking enables us to develop new insights and tools. Within this we have been considering:

 

• What are the individual and collective benefits to services of receiving more support for exercise for people living in with dementia?

 

• What are the potential barriers to providing exercise in care homes and/or community settings?

 

• What priority is given to this and what training is available to facilitate this?

 

Health and Wellbeing is identified in the Dementia Care Skills Education and Training Framework (section 6), as a key area for education and development for staff working with people with dementia both at tier one and tier two. Section 6 includes health as well as psychosocial activities as expected, and exercise is explicitly mentioned in the first outcome. We have interpreted the outcomes to a more meaningful and measurable course outcome, with exercise linking to many other aspects identified within this section, including but not limited to falls and pain management. Alongside my health colleagues we have debated and developed the merits and outcomes of this course which is set to be a very practical and holistic look at front line integrated interventions.

 

The Context

 

Over the last few years there has been some exciting research emerging about the impact of exercise on dementia. Alongside which we have started to see exercise offered in front line services as part of prevention strategies. In addition, policy and legislation changes such as the Care Act 2014 have outlined their vision for prevention, of which exercise must feature. Organisations like Age UK have offered chair based exercise, and exercise has been targeted by some authorities as an intervention to reduce the risk of falls and other health outcomes.

The emergence of more collaborative working between health and social care has stimulated the growth of such initiatives; pooling funding to improve health outcomes with prevention. However, what is emerging from the research is that exercise potentially has much wider benefits than reducing the risk of falls, particularly in terms of its application to dementia. Mental health services and local primary care services have offered exercise on prescription for many years as a valid form of treatment for depression, so exercise may potentially offer a valid treatment for some of the neuropsychiatric disorders which often are associated to dementia for example; depression, apathy, hyperactivity and agitation. Exercise may also enable improvements in cognition, and some research seems to suggest that exercise may act directly on the pathology of dementia. What is very clear however is that exercise has far reaching impacts both for physical and mental wellbeing.

 

Some Definitions

 

Exercise is planned, structured and repetitive movement which aims to improve or maintain physical health. Physical activity is any movement which contracts skeletal muscles and increases energy expenditure. The main types of exercise are aerobic, strength, flexibility and balance. Aerobic exercise increases breathing and heart rate. Strength exercises make your muscles stronger. Balance exercises can help prevent falls and flexibility exercises help you to remain limber and improve the range of movement.

 

The Barriers

 

However, accessing and maintaining activity where comorbidity is present can be a challenge. If a person is older when they develop dementia they may also experience barriers to accessing and maintaining exercise. For example, pain, fear of falling, arthritis, sensory loss, or respiratory problems. A person may also have restricted movement and some rigidity and quite possibly not be mobile. Good assessment, including pain assessment should be completed to develop a plan that is appropriate to that individual alongside advice from the GP. However not all people developing dementia are older, so this could exercise may be an excellent targeted intervention for younger people with dementia? A study in the Netherlands is currently researching the impacts of exercise in early on set dementia (EXERCISE-ON study) the authors  (Hooghiemstra et al 2012) suggest that certain dementia characteristics such as apathy may lead to sedentary and socially impoverished lifestyles, and by targeting these interventions in a timely fashion they can have far reaching impacts.

 

Together with co-morbidity barriers, we need to consider the challenges dementia brings in potentially engaging in exercise. For example, difficulties with coordination,  motor skills, visual perceptual challenge and memory difficulties.  These difficulties will require us to have a considered approach to the support systems needed to overcome these challenges.

There is such a wide variety of exercise available to us therefore it is about identifying strengths, and identifying suitable exercises that engage these strengths. This might include walking, dancing and/ or using music. Music can powerfully evoke memories, impact on motivation as well as provide rhythm and structure to support difficulties with memory. It is therefore an excellent method of exercise.

 

The Benefits

 

Exercise may improve thinking skills.  A Chinese study (Lam et al 2012) found that mind-body exercises such as Thai Chi could improve cognition as well as have additional impacts such as improving balance and strength. Exercise is targeted as a potential primary  prevention strategy to delay / reduce onset of dementia once someone has been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. The wider impacts of exercise on health outcomes are well documented, despite this many services fail to see the importance of it, and more specifically their role in supporting and enabling exercise.

 

Some studies have been completed to look at how effective exercise is in care homes at reducing the incidence of depression. Depression impacts on quality of life and pharmacologic treatments are not without their side effects. Some studies have found no evidence that moderate exercise in a care home had an impact on depression (Conradsson et al 2010). In contrast  Edris et al (2009) had more success in providing a three week exercise plan, as found that it reduced levels of agitation. Agitation and depression are not directly comparable, and clearly variables will differ within this context. However, reducing incidences of agitation could have a direct impact on staff costs associated to working with challenge. Researching the impact of exercise on depression within a care home is a complex task, as the social environment, beyond the time of the exercise will potentially impact. Separating these variables in research is bound to be a challenge.

 

Conclusion

 

Despite the barriers, both in research and in delivery opportunities for people living in care homes to exercise must continue to be a priority. Factors to be considered include: building design, access to outdoors, effective pain assessment and management, and education on the benefits of exercise. There may be a wider impact on these enablers, including improved mood, better sleep and potentially improved nutritional intake.

 

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Bibliography

 

 

Ahlskog, E.J., Geda, Y.E., Graff-Radford, N.R. and Petersen, R.C. (2011) ‘Physical exercise as a preventive or disease-modifying treatment of dementia and brain aging’, 86(9).

Aman, Edris et al.(2009) ‘Supervised Exercise to Reduce Agitation in Severely Cognitively Impaired Persons’, Journal of the American Medical Directors Association , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , 271 – 276

 

 

Baker, L.D., Frank, L.L., Foster-Schubert, K., Green, P.S., Wilkinson, C.W., McTiernan, A., Plymate, S.R., Fishel, M.A., Watson, S.G., Cholerton, B.A., Duncan, G.E., Mehta, P.D. and Craft, S. (2010) ‘Effects of aerobic exercise on mild cognitive ImpairmentA controlled trial’, Archives of Neurology, 67(1), pp. 71–79. doi:

 

Conradsson, M., Littbrand, H., Lindelöf, N., Gustafson, Y. and Rosendahl, E. (2010) ‘Effects of a high-intensity functional exercise programme on depressive symptoms and psychological well-being among older people living in residential care facilities: A cluster-randomized controlled trial’, Aging & Mental Health, 14(5), pp. 565–576

 

 

Duzel, E., van Praag, H. and Sendtner, M. (2016) ‘Can physical exercise in old age improve memory and hippocampal function?’, 139(3).

 

Hoffmann K, Frederiksen K, S, Sobol N, A, Beyer N, Vogel A, Simonsen A, H, Johannsen P, Lolk A, Terkelsen O, Cotman C, W, Hasselbalch S, G, Waldemar G, Preserving Cognition, Quality of Life, Physical Health and Functional Ability in Alzheimer’s Disease: The Effect of Physical Exercise (ADEX Trial): Rationale and Design. Neuroepidemiology 2013;41:198-207

 

Hooghiemstra, A.M., Eggermont, L.H., Scheltens, P., van der Flier, W.M., Bakker, J., de Greef, M.H., Koppe, P.A. and Scherder, E.J. (2012) ‘Study protocol: EXERcise and Cognition in sedentary adults with early-oNset dementia (EXERCISE-ON)’, BMC Neurology, 12(1), p. 75.

 

Littbrand, Hã., Lundin-Olsson, L., Gustafson, Y. and Rosendahl, E. (2009) ‘The effect of a high-intensity functional exercise program on activities of daily living: A Randomized controlled trial in residential care facilities’, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 57(10), pp. 1741–1749

 

 

Lam, Linda C.W. et al (2012) ‘A 1-Year Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Mind Body Exercise (Tai Chi) With Stretching and Toning Exercise on Cognitive Function in Older Chinese Adults at Risk of Cognitive Decline’ Journal of the American Medical Directors Association , Volume 13 , Issue 6 , 568.e15 – 568.e20

 

Lowery, D., Cerga-Pashoja, A., Iliffe, S., Thuné-Boyle, I., Griffin, M., Lee, J., Bailey, A., Bhattacharya, R. and Warner, J. (2013) ‘The effect of exercise on behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia: The EVIDEM-E randomised controlled clinical trial’, International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 29(8), pp. 819–827.

 

 

Schwenk, M., Dutzi, I., Englert, S., Micol, W., Najafi, B., Mohler, J. and Hauer, K. (2014) ‘An intensive exercise program improves motor performances in patients with dementia: Translational model of geriatric rehabilitation’, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 39(3), pp. 487–498Follow Us

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