How To Avoid Falling?

November 16, 2020

Fear of Falling

Falling

To avoid falling you first need to learn why it may be happening to you.

One of the biggest concerns in people over the age of 70 is losing their mobility or independence due to a fall.

Many will tell me how they don’t like when it takes them more than one time to get up out of a chair or a booth at a restaurant when they’re with family. They don’t like it when they stand up and feel wobbly or unsteady and need to grab onto a table or a loved one because they’re afraid that they’re going to fall.

Fear of falling is an enormous issue as we age and it’s a very normal situation.

There are three major components of balance:

  • vision
  • Our vestibular system
  • Muscles in our lower leg

 

All three decline as we get older. It’s a natural consequence of aging.

However, it does not mean that we can’t improve those things. Every one of those areas can improve with physical therapy or with vision correction techniques like going to see your eye doctor.

So we include an evaluation in our fall prevention programs that assess where most of the issue or problem is in your balance. And almost always, we treat leg strength because as we get older, the strength of our legs and ability to avoid falling or step wide to prevent a fall gets worse.

Read this blog on what you can do for vertigo.

How do you test your balance to avoid falling?

So we do a few tests to identify what our current level of ability is for the strength of our legs, and then we test our balance.

Watch this video on our Youtube to improve your balance so you will not fall. Video.

And we test balance with our eyes open and our eyes closed. Vision, as I said earlier, is a big component of our balance, and actually, as we age, we rely more and more on our vision. In low-light situations like parking garages or when we get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, it’s a problem when we can’t see very well. And the other factor is our vision gets worse and we can’t trust it like we used to.

Once we identify how bad our balance is, we find exercises within the realm of ability to begin the baby steps to improve that balance and to lessen that fear of falling.

If you or someone you love has told you they have a hard time walking out in the grass because it’s a much more unsteady or wobbly surface, or they’re in the shower, and when they go to wash their hair, they have to lean up against the wall, these are all times where you should be thinking that you or this person needs help to improve their balance to reduce the risk of falling.

 

Nick Hunter, PT, DPT
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