No abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether gaze stability exercises would result in improvements of cognitive function, balance ability and subjective health status in old people with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Old people with MCI (n= 9) and healthy old people (n= 9) performed gaze stability exercises for 4 weeks. Pre and post Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) for cognitive function, Timed Up and Go test for dynamic postural ability, Activities-Specific Balance Confidence for balance confidence and subjective health status were measured in both groups. After participating in gaze stability exercises, all outcome measures were significantly improved in MCI group and normal group also improved significantly in all outcome measures with the exception of balance confidence. In addition, there were significant differences in cognitive function and balance confidence between the two groups, and more improvements in MCI group. These results provide evidence that gaze stability exercises is beneficial to improve cognitive function as well as balance ability which affected on quality of life in old people with and without MCI.

This study aimed to identify major topics and trends of media reports in news articles related to fitness centers before and after COVID-19 using big data analysis and to suggest future improvements. We collected 20,528 news articles from 2018 to 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and 20,264 news articles from 2020 to 2021 (post-COVID-19) and conducted frequency analysis, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis. The top keywords related to fitness centers were fitness, health, healthcare, and center both before and after COVID-19, but after the outbreak of COVID-19, new keywords emerged, such as digital, COVID-19, indoor, confirmed, platform, and mobile. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, four topics were extracted: COVID-19 and Exercise, Digital Smart Health Care, Health and Beauty, and Indoor Sports Facilities and Quarantine. Sentiment analysis showed that the frequency of negative words increased by approximately three times since the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to COVID-19, the top keywords of the negative data in order were infection, virus, disease, and limit. Based on the identified major issues and trends related to the fitness industry, these results can be used as foundational data for the future planning and policy development of the fitness industry.

This study examined the effects of a novel online-delivered eHealth literacy intervention to improve eHealth literacy and positive health behaviors among female college students during COVID-19. Female college students taking a physical education class were allocated to either an online-based eHealth literacy intervention group (n = 62) or a physical education class (n = 58). Weekly two-hour sessions were implemented through Zoom videoconferencing over six weeks. We measured eHealth literacy, exercise self-schemata, and health behavior outcomes (eating, sleep, and exercise) before and after the intervention. A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to examine within- and between-group differences in all outcomes. The ANOVA (2 × 2) for the interaction effect of group and time showed a statistical significance in eHealth literacy and cognitive-emotional exercise self-schemata. There was a marginally significant interaction effect for exercise but none for eating and sleep. This was the first trial to examine the impact of the online eHealth literacy intervention on eHealth literacy and health behavior outcomes for college students during COVID-19. Preliminary findings indicated that the intervention showed promising effectiveness for improving eHealth literacy and promoting health behaviors among female college students.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether postural control would differ under various gaze tasks while standing in a wide or narrow stance between healthy young and old people, and also investigate whether postural sway and cognitive workload are affected by dualtask balance. Ten young and 10 healthy old people participated in this study. Each participant stood upright under four gaze conditions (fixation, saccade, pursuit, vestibular-ocular reflex) and two stance conditions (wide and narrow stance) in a total of 16 trials. Postural sway was measured by the mean sway amplitude of the center of pressure in the medial-lateral and anteriorposterior directions. Cognitive workload was measured through pupil response as an index of cognitive activity (ICA) by using Eye tracking system and Eyeworks. The results showed that postural sway significantly reduced when performing saccadic eye movement in both groups but greater postural sway was evoked in ves-tibular-ocular reflex condition. In addition, although old people had a significant increase in ICA compared to the young, there were no significant differences among all the gaze conditions in old people. These results confirmed that saccadic eye movements are the most beneficial for reducing postural sway regardless of aging and also provide some insight that pupil response represents an indicator of cognitive workload during dual-task balance context. These findings suggest that eye movement exercises may be considered as an effective intervention to improve postural control so a fall prevention program applying eye movement should be extended to individuals who are at risk of falling.