Here is a clip from a presentation I did for a group of older adults about balance and fall prevention. In this video I talk about why is balance important to you.
Why do we even need to be talking about balance?
In the video I’ll share 5 surprising facts about falls in older adults.
Why is Balance important to me?
A lot of people say to me… “Well, you know, I’m getting older, my balance is getting worse. That’s just part of life, right?” Well, to a degree, that’s true.
Balance does get worse as we age….our muscles get weaker… our reaction time slows down.
However there are things what we can do about it.
But again, why is it important to me?
So, I put some stats out here. Just to put some concrete numbers to how relevant Falls are in older adults.
1 out of 5 falls, result in a serious injury.
So that’s meaning a broken hip, a broken arm or a head injury. Requires you to go to the hospital and stay in the hospital and have a long recovery process unto that. 1 out of 5. I say that because, a lot of people say, I’ve had some falls but I never have a big fall. It was just a little fall.
And, what I say is… you got really lucky? And your continuing to get lucky, it only takes 1 out of 5 for you to end up with a big serious problem on your hand and unfortunately, a lot of people can in this room can attest to this… once you have a big fall, your fear of doing things, is really hard to get over. And to recover from something like a broken hip, is a long process. A lot of people feel like they ever get back to a 100%.
So, yes, if you have a fall. Yes, if you hurt yourself, we can help you get back some of your independence but our main priority here is to kind of see what we can do before we have a fall to prevent something for having in the future.
Each year, 2.8 million, older adults are treated in the emergency room for fall-related injuries.
2.8 million! That’s a lot of people. And these stats are actually from about 5 years ago from the CDC. So, when they come out with new stats, those might even be higher now that we’re having a way more baby bloomers coming into their medicare age.
Over 800 thousand of those are hospitalized because of their fall.
So, you know, you may have a fall and how a bruised arm or you know, you bang, cut your head or something but 800 thousand of those end up in those serious category. That’s what we’re trying to prevent here.
Each year, at least, 300,000 older adults are hospitalized for Hip fracture alone.
Hip fractures are the most common big injuries after fall, most likely because of falling sideways and landing on your hip. The thing about hip fracture is most of the time, you have to have a hip replacement after you have a hip fracture, depending on where it is. But regardless, most of the time where it requires surgery and that’s a big recovery process.
More than, 95% of hip fractures are caused by falling.
So, hips don’t fracture normally. You don’t hear people walking down the street and they said, “oh ouch!” and you know, they’re hip problem, you know what I mean. It’s mostly because of falls. And so, when we talked about how do we reduce our chances on having a big fracture like that, we’re talking about fall prevention so that’s we’re here today to talk about.
To find out MORE on how important balance can be for your life, click on the link below:
www.naturalfittherapy.com/balance-blog
