Bathing is an essential part of Japanese culture, but bathing-related deaths have been a serious problem for the Japanese elderly people. The purpose of this study was to propose a safe bathing method for them. Environmental factors such as bathroom and water temperature and their effects on the physiological responses were observed. The research articipants
were 6 males and 8 females aged between 65 and 79 years. The physiological indexes that used to evaluate the effects of bathing were pulse, blood pressure, pressure rate product, along with subjective symptomatic indexes. These indexes were assessed throughout the entire process of bathing, starting at the resting period before the bath, continuing through the duration of the bath and concluding at one hour after the bath. Both physiological and subjective indexes were measured totally 20 times throughout the study. The major findings were that a room temperature of 27℃ caused less physiologic stress on the participants compared to a room temperature of 20℃. A bathing water temperature of 38℃
was found to be the safest, although the level of bathing satisfaction was lower when compared to the 42℃ condition.
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