Hand tremor in archers: Laishram 2008 study

Forty-five national-level archers from the Manipur Archery Association in India (31 men and 14 women aged 16 to 28) were randomly split into three groups for four weeks. One group took jatamansi, a root from Indian traditional medicine that the authors describe as sedative, 3 grams three times a day; one did strengthening exercises with Thera-Band elastic bands for the shoulders and arms, followed by respiratory muscle exercises; the third carried on with its usual training.

Hand steadiness and score were measured before and after. Steadiness is the number of contacts and the total contact time of a probe held for 60 seconds inside a 4 mm hole; the score comes from an American school test of 12 arrows at 10 and 20 yards. Differences between the groups were significant on every measure (for instance F = 12.50 for left-arm contact time and F = 6.53 for score), and the band group improved the most. Jatamansi reduced contact time compared with the controls, but not the number of contacts, and its group's score did not differ from the controls'.

Steadiness was measured seated, with the apparatus at shoulder height, in a single 60-second trial per arm with 2 minutes' rest: the number of times the probe touched the edge of the hole and the total contact time were recorded. The shooting test is the one developed by AAHPER, the American physical education association, with two ends totalling 12 arrows.

The strengthening work comprised shoulder flexion, abduction, scaption and internal and external rotation, shrugs, seated rows and elbow flexion and extension, in 3 sets of 10 with a minute's rest, three times a week. The band started at green for the boys and red for the girls, stretched to 50% of its length in the first two weeks and 75% in the last two, and each session ended with 15 minutes of respiratory exercises on a dedicated device and 15 repetitions of diaphragmatic breathing. The jatamansi was a root extract from a certified manufacturer. The analyses use t-tests and one-way analysis of variance, with Scheffé's test for pairwise comparisons.

The paper reports no means or standard deviations for any measure, only the statistical tests: there is no way of knowing how much contacts, times and scores changed, or how many archers were in each group. The band group also did respiratory exercises, so the effects of the two interventions cannot be separated. There was no placebo and the archers knew their group: those taking the root knew it, and the paper does not say the assessors were unaware of the groups.

The steadiness test is done seated with a probe in the hand, far removed from the bow arm at full draw; the shooting test, designed for students, with 12 arrows at 10 and 20 yards, is a long way from the competition distances of national archers. One table gives 42 total degrees of freedom where there should be 44. Anxiety, which the discussion puts forward as the reason the root should help, was not measured, and neither was the safety of the preparation.

The usable finding concerns strengthening: four weeks of band work for the shoulders and arms, together with respiratory muscle work, were followed by a steadier hand in a laboratory test and a better score in a short shooting test. How much that matters at 70 metres in competition is unknown, since the study does not measure it and does not even report the size of the effect.

On jatamansi the study gives no grounds for taking it: there is no effect on score, the effect on steadiness is partial, and using a herbal preparation with a sedative action remains a medical question that this paper does not address.