Having good balance is a critical component of healthy aging. Everyday activities like reaching for your coffee cup, bending down to pick up the paper, putting on your shoes, and getting up from a chair require subtle shifts in your body’s weight distribution. A healthy sense of balance allows you to hold your position or move at will during these weight fluctuations without falling.
Balance control is a complex physiological process. As the body ages, muscle strength, joint range of motion, and reaction time all decrease. These factors can have a negative effect on a person’s balance control and may lead to balance dysfunction – a factor linked to falls among the elderly.
Each year, one in three adults over the age of 65 falls, and the risk of falling increases proportionately with age – at 80 years, over half of seniors fall annually1.
Among this age group, falls are the number one cause of fractures, hospital admissions for trauma, loss of independence, and injury deaths2. Most of the fractures caused by falling are in the arm, hand, ankle, spine, pelvis, and hip, with hip fractures being one of the most serious types of fall injury.
In fact, falls account for 25% of all hospital admissions, and 40% of all nursing home admissions3.
The majority of all falls take place inside the home4. Those who do fall are two-to-three-times more likely to fall again, and many people who fall develop a fear of falling.
Here’s the good news: Falls are preventable. Falling is not an inevitable result of aging, and there are steps you can take to improve your balance and decrease your chances of falling.
Muscle strength and flexibility, which are an imperative part of maintaining good balance, decrease with age, especially for sedentary adults, but these can be partially restored with the right physical therapy program.
Studies have shown that attention to certain risk factors, such as impaired balance, can significantly reduce rates of falling. Considerable evidence indicates that the most effective fall reduction programs involve systematic fall risk assessment and targeted interventions5.
Additional research reveals that a physical therapist-prescribed exercise program targeting balance and strength can be effective in improving a number of balance and related outcomes in older people with mild balance impairment6.
We have a comprehensive Balance Program that includes assessment and evaluation programs, balance retraining, and vestibular rehabilitation. With balance retraining and vestibular rehabilitation, our goal is to improve balance function and visual-motor control, increase general activity levels, and help your body compensate for inner ear disorders.
As balance dysfunction can sometimes cause problems with walking, we also have a Gait Training program. Gait training consists of making sure that your manner of walking is as effective, sure-footed, and safe as it possibly can be. A balanced, steady gait helps in the prevention of falls and injuries. Strength, endurance, motion, balance, and coordination are all components of an effective gait and our certified physical therapists work with patients to help them reach their goal of safe mobility.
If you want more information about your balance, you can schedule a fall risk assessment at FYZICAL Therapy and Balance by calling (503)698-5500.
1 “Falls Among Older Adults: An Overview,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Falls/adultfalls.html
2 Ibid.
3 “How Often Falls Occur,” Learn Not to Fall, http://www.learnnottofall.com/content/fall-facts/how-often.jsp
4 “Where Seniors Fall,” Learn Not to Fall, http://www.learnnottofall.com/content/fall-facts/where-seniors-fall.jsp
5 Judy A. Stevens, A CDC Compendium of Effective Fall Interventions: What Works for Community-Dwelling Older Adults,”2nd Edition (Atlanta: CDC, 2010),1.
6 Xiao Jing Yang, et al., “Effectiveness of a Targeted Exercise Intervention in Reversing Older People’s Mild Balance Dysfunction: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” Physical Therapy, 92 (2012).