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Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

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Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#121

Post by salad-tycoon »

alecco wrote: post #4
loughnane wrote: post #2

Paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... Results: - SBP difference was 2.4mmHg (95%CI -4.39 to -0.41mmHg) between Tai chi and aerobic exercise.

> 6 Vasculocardiology Department, Fuzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fuzhou, China > 7 YongDingLu Community Health Care Center, Aerospace Center Hospital, Beijing, China > 8 Traditional Chinese Medicine Department, BaiLi Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic, Beijing > 9 Medical Department of Beijing Gulou Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Beijing, C…

I’m a trained “hypno” clinician because I wanted to learn more about the study of suggestion and outcomes.

I remember studies coming out of China saying hypnotherapy could be effective in replacing anesthesia. Then I also found out about how there are many fraudulent studies coming out of China. (1)

With 17,000 retracted studies with Chinese coauthors since 2021.

Now that’s not to say that tai chai doesn’t work, nor does it mean this is fraudulent but it does pay to learn how to read these studies with a critical eye.

https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00397-x

Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#123

Post by laeri »

hosh wrote: post #82
adrian_b wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yoga is not really comparable, because it is much more static. Of course, there is nothing magic about the Tai chi sequences and many other sequences of movements executed in a similar manner should have a similar effect. A general stretching and mobility routine could be equivalent, but only if it would be similarly complete in exercising the whole body. Presumably the manner of executing Tai chi sequences, i.e. slo…

It isn't the sequences or even the outward shape of Tai Chi so much as what is happening within the body that generates the shapes and sequences. There are long-term, transformative effect on the body. For example, my own musculature have developed structures you cannot develop through weight-lifting. I can tell you for example, xingyiquan, baguazhang, bajiquan, wing chun, akijutsu (among many others) all (historical…

What kind of structures did you develop that you can't get by weightlifting? I assume these are some kind of stabilizers that you train by some tai chi movements. If this is the case then it should also be possible to train these using a weightlifting regime with some specific movements targeting those stabilizers.

Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#124

Post by tmtvl »

lagadu wrote: post #117
tmtvl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poe's law is strong with this one. The Superman bit makes me inclined to believe this is just a joke, but I know there's real believers out there.

It wasn't the "forgotten breath techniques that allow you to survive in space and travel backwards through time"?

I mean there are stories of people believing kung fu training would make them impervious to bullets, so that doesn't seem too big a leap. Wasn't breatharianism a thing people believed in?

Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#125

Post by pedalpete »

georgeburdell wrote: post #122

Chinese researchers from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine publish study showing Chinese exercise practices are superior for some health metric

Do you not eat Chinese food because it comes from China? I don't think Tai Chi is part of China's master plan of how they plan to take over the world.

However, gastro-diplomacy is a real thing!

https://www.vice.com/en/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason...

Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#126

Post by ksaj »

livueta wrote: post #88
bunderbunder wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alarm bells go off in my head whenever the demonstration of an extraordinary martial arts skill is being done by a master and his student. Maybe the most egregious example of how this sort of dynamic can work out is George Dillman and his "no touch knockouts". It's easy enough to find amusing YouTube videos showing how that worked out when someone roped him into trying to demonstrate the technique on someone who wasn…

Reminds me of this guy, who got a ton of blowback for calling out fake martial arts masters, goading them into fights and humiliating them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Xiaodong > Xu started a dispute with Wei on social media, beginning with a demand that Wei provide evidence of his abilities, and culminating in a bare-knuckle fight in a basement in Chengdu in 2017, where Xu won convincingly in less than 20 sec…

Mentalist Derren Brown also did an episode where he took advantage of students of this kind of teaching, by using their "brainwashed" instincts against them to demonstrate he had the same powers as their sensei, even though he had no martial arts training.

Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#127

Post by leashless »

corysama wrote: post #44

Long ago, maybe before the consumer internet, I saw a video claiming to showcase people who studied tai chi as a fighting art instead of just exercise. It was a lot of being able to follow the other person's movements to the point that "Fighting a tai chi master is like wrestling with an empty jacket". There was also a demonstration where a master pushed a student's middle finger back using an open palm. No matter ho…

"Fighting" Tai Chi was traditionally taught to people who were already very adept at Kung Fu. If you can already fight the form trains a bunch of clever footwork and a few other things at a really high level; it's _clever_. But if you can't already fight it has none of that basic stuff in it like "how to hit people really hard". If you don't know that already Tai Chi forms won't teach it to you every effectively.

Younger kung fu people wouldn't generally be so into Tai Chi. You'd learn it as you aged so that as you became less athletic you'd be substituting smart for strong and extending your lifetime as an effective fighter. All of this context was lost when it came to the west.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Chengfu this is kinda what top tier tai chi people used to look like: neckless bears with fists the size of your head.

Also: weapons. In China open hand stuff is taught before you attempt the complexity of swinging round a sword but these were (and are) armed arts. Nobody shows up at a real fight without a machete or sabre I believe.

Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#128

Post by leashless »

nandkeypull wrote: post #73
corysama wrote: post #44

Long ago, maybe before the consumer internet, I saw a video claiming to showcase people who studied tai chi as a fighting art instead of just exercise. It was a lot of being able to follow the other person's movements to the point that "Fighting a tai chi master is like wrestling with an empty jacket". There was also a demonstration where a master pushed a student's middle finger back using an open palm. No matter ho…

If you can find a competent instructor from a lineage that preserved the fighting applications of tai chi, you can see some pretty interesting grappling and joint-locking techniques. It's not all snake oil. One example (Yang-style tai chi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp2jWeaKrqI

Here is a pretty good example of a very large trained fighter and a very excellent and much smaller tai chi guy going at it reasonably hard (like maybe one of them walks away with a concussion type hard).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D5DGpORANE

I think that's a pretty good example of what "people who can actually fight well use tai chi techniques" looks like. A lot of force is going into those throws, bodies are flying, and they aren't students doing a demonstration for a crowd. Legit.

Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#129

Post by leashless »

stronglikedan wrote: post #101
nandkeypull wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can find a competent instructor from a lineage that preserved the fighting applications of tai chi, you can see some pretty interesting grappling and joint-locking techniques. It's not all snake oil. One example (Yang-style tai chi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp2jWeaKrqI

Honestly, it still looks like it could only defend against an opponent that moves in slow motion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc3Q6vqvemA this is pretty much what high level skills in Tai Chi look like. You can see that it's mainly very, very secure footwork and explosive coordinated force delivered when the opponent is off balance -- this is a grappling situation but the logic is pretty similar if they were hitting each-other or even using swords / spears.

Re: Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise

#130

Post by kazinator »

eindiran wrote: post #103
kazinator wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone I suspect that if we venture into the streets of an American city and interview random passers-by, fewer than 10% will know that "chai" is a word that already means "tea".

Right, but they will know what "chai tea" refers to, ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_chai

Masala chai works for me; it nicely distinguishes it from Earl Grey chai, rose hip chai, or camomile chai.
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