What Makes Balance Training So Important?
Recently I was watching a Josh Johnson comedy clip on the realities of falling as you age. Johnson is still in his 30s, but his wry honesty about how falling doesn’t get easier had me belly-laughing — and as a woman entering my mid-40s, I can confirm. Tripping over the dog as you round a corner or missing a step on the stairs isn’t guaranteed to end well. In fact, the stats about falls in older adults are no laughing matter — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 14 million adults 65 and older — roughly 1 in 4 — report a fall each year, and falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injury in that group.
But it’s not just a fall itself that’s the problem. “If a hospital stay is required, you stop moving for one week or two weeks, and at this age the atrophy that occurs is typically really, really rough,” says Scott Mongold, PhD, a biomechanist and neurophysiologist whose research has focused on how the brain tracks balance and proprioception. “The fall is not typically what kills or causes long-term damage, but it is often the first domino of a poor health cascade.”
Excerpted from yahoo! health
