Muscle and skin improve by home-based FES and full-body in-bed gym

Abstract

All progressive muscle contractile impairments, including advanced age-related muscle power decline, need permanent management. Most elderly persons, in particular octogenarians, spend small amounts of time in daily physical activity, resulting in a decline in body condition with more and more frequent hospitalizations and finally potentially forcing them to bed permanently. Further several neurological injuries, which are even more acutely debilitating than those problems related to aging, are responsible for early limitation of mobility. Inspired by the proven capability to recover skeletal muscle contractility and strength by home-based functional electrical stimulation (h-bFES) in both elderly and SCI patients, we suggest that the elderly and early aging patients participate in hbFES and add a 20 min daily routine of 12 easy and safe physical exercises, namely home-based Full-Body In-Bed Gym. Continued regularly, h-bFES and the Full-Body In-Bed Gym will help to maintain the independence of frail older people and may reduce the risks of serious consequences of accidental falls and pressure sore complications.

Keywords: Full-Body In-Bed Gym; atrophy; borderline mobility impaired persons; elderly; h-bFES; muscle; skin.

Figure 1.

Muscle Color Computed Tomography of thigh muscles at 20 cm from femur head. Both the Quadriceps and the Hamstring muscles increased in size and tissue density (improved content of the red healthy muscle fibers) after two years of training using the Vienna protocol for h-bFES of permanently denervated human muscles. It is worth noting that, even starting at 3 years post SCI, h-bFES is able to recover the Hamstring muscles substantially Right Leg Ham String muscles of single patient which started h-bFES 3 years after SCI. Left panel imaged at 3 year post SCI with no h-bFES treatment. Right panel imaged at 5 years post SCI with last teo years including h-bFES treatments