The purposes of this study are to investigate factors affecting to physical activity of elderly with chronic conditions and differences between urban and rural areas, thereby provide clue to develope and promote better physical activity programs for the elderly with chronic conditions.
The study population was 934 subjects with some combination of hypertension, arthritis and/or diabetes and age was 65 years or older. The key study results were as follows:
The differences in the practicing physical activity rates for each chronic disease between urban and rural areas, the elderly with hypertension revealed significant statistically in area of vigorous or moderate, walking, flexibility, and muscle strength exercises. The 70-74 year old group had a higher rate of vigorous physical activity and moderate physical activity than the urban area residents group. And the over 75 years group had a lot more walking, flexibility and muscle strength exercise, than the rural area residents.
The elderly arthritis subjects, aged 70 -74 at the urban dwellings, had a higher rate of flexibility and muscle exercise physical activity. The diabetic subjects, aged 70-74 years at the rural dwelling, had a higher moderate physical activity than the urban group. In the aged 70-74 years, these group did a more flexibility and muscle strength exercise, and in the above 75 age group, there was a lot more walking exercise.
The factors affecting physical activities at the urban hypertension group to be significant statistically were education level, number of chronic conditions, activities of daily living, and quality of life. But at the rural residents, the affecting factors were activities of daily living and limitation of activity.
In the urban arthritis group, the only affecting factor with statistically significant was activities of daily living, and at the rural area was age, income level, activity of limitation of daily living. But in case of diabetes mellitus, there was no factors affecting to physical activity with statistically significant.
In conclusion, the study results indicated that the level of physical activity in rural areas is higher than that in urban areas. In addition, the factors to affect the level of physical activity revealed different in case of hypertension and diabetes between the urban and rural groups.