Restored by tai chi: Meditative martial art strengthens transplant patients’ bodies, minds Health Tips

Restored by tai chi: Meditative martial art strengthens transplant patients’ bodies, minds

The organ-transplant patients show up early for this appointment, lining up in front of Richard Link as he starts the session with a soothing, authoritative voice that makes him sound more like a doctor than a man who is on his fourth kidney himself.

“Let’s start with a deep breath,” Link tells the half-dozen middle-age and elderly men and women gathered in the lobby of a building on the campus of Methodist University Hospital.

“Now, a little back stretch, like a cat when it gets up in the morning.”

It’s early evening, and the relaxing strains of music indicate that Link, 66, is launching into another of his twice-weekly classes in tai chi, the Chinese martial arts form employing fluid motions, gentle exercise and stretching.

If tai chi conjures up images of large group fitness sessions, in Link’s class it’s strictly therapeutic.

Knowing firsthand the burdens facing people who either have received or are about to get organ transplants, Link has become increasingly devoted to teaching them the meditative martial arts form.

Tai chi, he says, restores muscle strength and aerobic endurance, improves balance and flexibility, reduces stress and pain and enhances circulation and sleeping.

“It’s the perfect exercise for pre- and post-transplant patients,” Link says. “It’s gentle, it’s easy, everyone can do it.”

For the past year, the retired Air Force jet aircraft mechanic has been giving free classes for transplant patients and their caregivers and speaking at support meetings for patients.

The campus of Methodist, one of the top 12 transplant centers in the nation, is an obvious location for Link’s classes. In

partnership with the University of Tennessee, the hospital has performed 2,000 kidney and 1,000 liver transplants, as well as 100 pancreas and 270 kidney-pancreas operations over the past three decades.

The hospital provides Link space for his classes and lets him leave brochures at the transplant clinic.

“It’s not that we endorse one thing or another. We think that anything that stimulates physical activity is very important,” said Dr. Luis Campos, surgical director of the kidney-transplant program at Methodist.

Link’s focus is organ-transplant patients, but if recent research is any guide, the benefits of tai chi are much more broad-ranging.

In studies published just this year, researchers from Harvard and a Boston hospital reported that tai chi workouts improved the mood and confidence of people with chronic heart failure, while another scientist at the University of Missouri found that tai chi helped cancer patients overcome the cognitive problems associated with chemotherapy.

Other studies indicate tai chi can significantly reduce falls among elderly people.

“There’s a growing but imperfect amount of evidence for a number of types of rehabilitation” that can benefit from tai chi, said Dr. Peter Wayne, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of tai chi and mind-body research there.

The reason, Wayne said, is the relaxation and concentration involved.

“Tai chi is considered a mind-body exercise,” he said.

That tai chi offers a variety of benefits shouldn’t come as a surprise. As far back as 1947, one of the best-known grand masters of the martial art form, Cheng Man-Ching, wrote about how it “strengthens the weak, raises the sick, invigorates the debilitated and encourages the timid.”

Link, a native of upstate New York who has been living in Memphis for two decades, knows all too well how weak and sick transplant patients can feel.

Possibly as a result of a childhood strep infection, he suffered from a condition called acute glomerulonephritis, in which scar tissue clogged the filtering capacity of his kidneys, shutting them down.

In 1981, both of his kidneys were removed, and he received a transplant organ donated by his brother. That kidney lasted until 2000, when he received another transplant, this time from a cadaver.

Following the transplants, Link found himself weak and overweight, with little energy.

Those conditions are typical of transplant patients, who frequently suffer dramatic loss of muscle mass, said Campos.

“We often find that people who have experienced organ failure are very debilitated,” he says.

Two years after his second transplant, Link took up taekwondo, a more aggressive, vigorous form of martial arts. But about three years ago, he looked for a gentler form of exercise for his aging body.

Link found tai chi — and liked the results so much that in early 2010 he approached Methodist about teaching it to other transplant patients.

One of the factors that drew Link to tai chi, as opposed to other martial arts or workouts, was its meditative quality. From his experience, and from observations of other patients, he was acutely aware of the emotional strains associated with transplants.

“I think the big thing with pre- and post-transplant patients is stress and depression,” Link says.

Along with worrying about their own health, some patients are wracked by guilt over receiving their “special gift,” he says.

Since starting his classes in June 2010, Link has attracted a devoted, if small, following.

“They almost never miss” a class, he says.

The patients and caregivers here on this June evening say they’re much better off for having taken tai chi.

Memphis native Kendrick Hope, 45, received a kidney transplant three years ago. He recalls how weak he was when he tried swimming following his operation.

“I couldn’t even climb out of the swimming pool,” he says. “After two weeks of this (tai chi), I had full strength in my legs.”

For Bill Palmer, 64, a retired airline customer-service supervisor living in Bartlett, tai chi was “a big benefit” in dealing with the stress he experienced before the liver transplant he underwent last December.

Afterward, it boosted his energy level, he says.

“I think it allowed me to recover faster — to get out and be active.”

That capacity to help people feel good enough to do other things is what makes tai chi such a universal tool in health care, Link says.

He recently traveled to Indiana to get certified to teach it to people who must remain seated and those who need help preventing falls. He talks about the promise tai chi holds for a wide range of patients.

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