Objectives: This study aimed to determine the activity groupings reflecting functional characteristics required in daily life for the institutionalized dependent females in the old-old elderly group, by examining the interrelationships of activities based on actual achievement characteristics. Methods: The participants were 697 dependent elderly living at welfare institutions in Japan and 344 old-old females were used for analysis. Factor analysis, based on Promax with the Kaiser Normalization method, was conducted using 74 activities of daily living (ADL) items to determine activity groups. Furthermore, whether each activity group could be classified into sub-groups was confirmed by applying factor analysis to the activities consisting of each activity group. Results: Four activity groups of lower extremity activities, manual activities, changing and holding posture activities, and upper extremity and dexterous manual activities were interpreted. Except for the manual activity group, these activity groups were classified into two sub-groups. Conclusions: These activity groupings were characterized by similarities of the body parts used in achievement and the difficulty of activity. The activity groupings obtained in this study are considered to be useful in ADL assessment focusing on evaluating functional characteristics of the dependent elderly.
Elderly ; Old episode ; Manuals ; livin ; g <3>

Insufficient nocturnal sleep often triggers off various forms of psychosomatic diseases in the aged. The result is that we turn to medication. However, nurses and caregivers should try to seek other ways to cope with the situation without depending on drugs so that the old people could lead a safe and comfortable life. Not a few users of our facility suffer from circadian rhythm sleep disorders in addition to cerebrovascular disease, senile dementia and other impairments. They are asleep during the daytime and awake by night. Homa 1) says one of the principal causes of sleep-wake rhythm disorders is inadequate environmental light. We were also interested in the study by Mito et al. that sleep disorders were ameliorated by sunbathing because sunlight helps restore the damaged adjustment function of the biological clock. Hama et al. have observed that two-hour exposure to light stimulation (over 25,000 Lux) in the morning is effective in adjusting sleep-wake rhythm. Based on these observations, we tried experiments in our facility. This paper is a report of our findings thus far obtained about the benefit of the morning sunlight.
Sleep ; Rhythm ; Sleep brand of diphenhydramine hydrochloride ; Old episode ; Morning

Life expectancy does not necessarily match quality of life (QOL). A cohort study involving a population of 10,107 in a certain city of Japan was conducted to evaluate active life expectancy (ALE), which has a direct relationship with QOL. The ALE that took functional recovery rates into account was 17.20 and 19.08 years for males and females respectively, at the age of 65. These values increased by 2.98 and 3.87 years for men and women, respectively, compared with when functional recovery rates were not considered. ALE may serve as an indicator for the objective evaluation of various public health services provided by local governments.
Life Expectancy ; seconds ; Cities ; Active brand of pseudoephedrine-triprolidine ; Old episode