Biography
Dr. Mohammod Monirul Islam
Dr. Mohammod Monirul Islam
National Institue of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Japan
Title: Cost-effective Physical Exercises Suitable for Older Adults
Abstract: 
Aging is associated with declines in physical function (Spirduso, 2005). Due to a significant change in demography, many older adults in recent days get minimum assistance from others while performing their activities of daily living (ADL). Reduction of lean body mass (particularly the skeletal muscle mass) and muscular strength are important factors associated with age. Both the decreased muscle mass and muscular strength diminish the capacity to perform ADL, retain employment or participate in social events; in short, there occurs reductions in the overall quality of life. An optimum and regular physical exercise programs along with an appropriate caloric intake may offset aging-associated declines in physical health.
The number of elderly population is increasing rapidly in many developed countries (for instance, it is predicted that by 2025, 28% of the population in Japan will be over the age of 65 years). This suggests that supervised laboratory-based exercise programs in a few specialized centers will not provide sufficient access to exercise for all older adults. To ensure that all older adults can realize the benefits of participating in regular physical activity, cost-effective home-based and community-based (HB&CB) exercise programs must be developed. On the other hand, open spaces such as public parks and lakes are becoming occupied by unauthorized vendors and merchants in order to construct either new shopping malls or other kind of business centers in many developing countries. As a result, open spaces to perform outdoor physical exercises are decreasing in number and sizes each year in these countries which is affecting badly the health and wellbeing of the general population. To address this issue professionally, HB&CB exercises (Islam et al., 2016) could be a better alternative of outdoor exercises for middle aged and older people in these countries.
In our community outreach physical exercise programs, we use elderly friendly mode of exercises such as Nordic walking (Takeshima et al., 2013) for outdoor aerobic exercise, chair-based aerobic exercises (Kato et al., 2018) for indoor endurance exercise, elastic band-based resistance exercise (Hasegawa et al., 2014), and customized balance training (Islam et al., 2004). Recently, we conducted a HB&CB exercise program to see the efficacy of plastic water bottle-based resistance exercise (PeTeX) and self-body weight-based resistance exercise (SeBeX) on muscular performance of a remote island dwelling older adults in Japan (Islam et al., 2020; presented at The 2020 Yokohama Sport Conference (held online), Tokyo, Japan). In that study, the HB&CB-based PeTeX and SeBeX were found effective in improving muscular performance of the participants. As a resistance exercise tool, plastic water bottles are cheap indicating that PeTeX is cost-effective. 
Older people are commonly interested in physical activities that they view as being intrinsically enjoyable, such as interaction with other people who are also performing the same physical activities (Devereux-Fitzgerald et al., 2016) may be because they feel lonely and loneliness is becoming a public health concern with serious health consequences in older adults (Yang et al., 2018). HB&CB exercises create opprtunities for older adults to make new friends and thus contribute to their mental health in positive ways.
The concept of HB&CB exercises is not yet well known in many developing countries. However, methodical practice of these exercises (https://youtu.be/x8iAVJfbDOU) by older adults from around the world may contribute to the fulfillment of a sustainable development goal (SDG) named Healthcare through health promotion.
Biography: 
Dr. Islam studied Medicine at the Mymensing Medical college in Bangladesh and graduated as an MBBS in 1989. He received his PhD degree from the Aichi Medical University in Japan in 2000. He worked as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at the Nagoya City University (2002-2004) in Japan. He worked as a geriatric rehabilitation adviser at Yonaha General Hospital in Japan (2005-2016). Currently, he has been working as an Associate Professor of Public Health at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya. He wrote about 60 scientific papers and presented his research works in about 200 scientific meetings, mostly at international settings. Dr. Islam’s research focuses on cost-effective home-based and community-based physical exercises suitable for older adults.