Tips to Avoid Falls and Why Balance Declines with Age
Our risks for falling dramatically increase with age. Research shows that those over the age of 65 suffer the greatest amount of falls and those falls are the second cause of accidental or unintentional deaths. Those who don’t have a fatal outcome will often have serious outcomes such as shoulder or hip fractures and a possible head trauma.
The human body is inherently unstable, we have a very small base relative to our height. Maintaining an upright position while moving place to place and doing a variety of difficult tasks is a continual and ongoing challenge for our bodies. Our success comes from the integration of three main systems in our body; our vestibular, visual and lastly somatosensory. These three systems must work together in constant harmony to maintain balance; as we walk on an uneven surface, bend over to pick something up off the ground, or receive a playful push from a friend. Often as we age these systems often worsen and we face more risk of falling.
With age and inactivity, a special emphasis on the latter, those three sensory systems do not process as rapidly as they once did. This decline leads to decreased cognition and especially multi-tasking. You have probably noticed that elderly adults often stop when walking to talk, rather than walking and talking at the same time.
The visual system: often time eyesight gets worse with age, especially our ability to have proper depth perception. This leads to difficulty reading the lay or the land or being able to judge distances which often leads to a fall. Often elderly adults have more difficulty seeing things in poor lighting.
The somatosensory system: with age comes reduced feedback from the joints in the feet and legs. This often comes from less flexibility, sensation, strength, coordination. These often come from a variety of different diseases the elderly often suffer with such as: arthritis, neuropathy and diabetes.
The vestibular system: vertigo, inner ear infections and especially medication side-effects often cause disturbances in the vestibular system.
The good news is that it’s never too late to work on balance and make improvements. Physical therapists specialize in helping adults that are at risk for falls. We are trained to identify your main cause of falling and being able to fix it with usually relatively simple exercises.
Some very simple things that I always recommend to my elderly patients to prevent and avoid falls are: having night lights set up, especially one that goes from your bed to the bathroom. Removing those very stylish rugs, because they are often tripping hazards. Leaving plenty of space in areas of high traffic; removing chairs and decor in various hallways or transition places in your home. Hand/grab rails in your bathroom. Checking with your physician to see if any of your medications might be the cause for your falls.
These simple tricks may save your life; at the very least they should save you substantial amounts of time and money from avoiding a fall. I always say, “you can either spend a little bit of time, money, and effort now avoiding and preventing a fall. Or you can spend a lot of time, money and effort later recovering from a fall.”
See my Youtube Channel, “Dr. Cole Handy Jones” for more helpful tips, tricks and exercises to reduce your chances of falling.
Dr. Cole Handy Jones PT, DPT, CMPT