The explicit goals of targeting multiple physiological and cognitive processes and integrating their dynamics make Tai Chi particularly well-suited for evaluating the effects on an intervention designed to enhance healthy aging within a systems biology framework.

Tai Chi is a multi-component mind-body exercise that is grounded in the holistic model of traditional Chinese medicine. Due to its capacity to characterize complex dynamics within and between physiological systems, the emerging field of complex systems biology and its array of quantitative tools show great promise for improving our understanding of aging, monitoring senescence, and providing biomarkers for evaluating novel interventions, including traditional mind-body exercises, that treat age-related disease and promote healthy aging. 1, 2 Because of the complex nature of aging processes, present reductionistic methods may not be adequate for defining good health or healthy aging. Aging is typically associated with progressive multi-system impairment, leading to decreased physical and cognitive function and reduced adaptability to stress. Health requires the integration-across multiple time and spatial scales-of control systems, feedback loops, and regulatory processes that enable an organism to function and adapt to the demands of everyday life. While modern biomedicine has made great strides in defining and understanding disease, the objective characterization of healthy aging remains elusive.

With our rapidly expanding elderly population, the questions ‘what is healthy aging?’ and ‘how do we promote it’ are increasingly relevant.

System shock 1 chi