Warming hands and sleep in the elderly evaluated by actigraphy and subjective sleep score.

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 23593462
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Community health/Gerontological nurisng
• Research Institution: Wakayama Medical University
• Principal Investigator: IWANE NAOMI 和歌山県立医科大学, 保健看護学部, 助教 (90554527)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): MIZUTA Mayumi 和歌山県立医科大学, 保健看護学部, 准教授 (00300377) ; SHIKAMURA Mariko 和歌山県立医科大学, 保健看護学部, 教授 (09015638) ; HANO Takuzou 和歌山県立医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (90156381)
• Project Period (FY): 2011-04-28 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 温熱効果 / 睡眠 / 手 / 高齢者

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The occurrence of sleep is closely related to changes in body temperatures. Foot bath is known to improve sleep quality, but the effects of hand warming are not fully elucidated. We investigated effects of hand warming on sleep in the elderly person. Both hands were warmed for 30 minutes. The core temperature did not change, but the peripheral temperature rose more than 1 °C. The change of the temperature was not affected by the age of the subjects. After 30 minutes hand warming, sleep-onset latency, sleep duration, sleep efficiency and the number of nocturnal awakenings tended to improve, respectively, but they were not statistically significant. Hand warming showed partially good effects on sleep of the elderly people, but the effects were less stable than that of the foot bath.

Free Research Field

基礎看護学