Reduce Fall Risk in Your Home...Here's How!!

One-third of all people over 65, over the age of 65, have fallen. 30 percent of those that have fallen have sustained a major life-altering injury, such as a hip fracture or a brain injury. If you're lucky enough to have fallen and not injured yourself, what ultimately ends up is you get into this cycle. It's a cycle of fear of falling, which is new now because you've fallen once. That fear leads to a drastic reduction, self-imposed reduction, in your own activity level. So you're not as active as you used to be, and your muscles aren't just used to moving around and they're not staying strong, your endurance is not staying up, and then that just leads to more fall risk in the future, which leads to more fear, which leads to more inactivity, which leads to less quality of life.

So within the home, there's a few things that you can do, especially if you're a senior or if you're a family member of a senior who is living alone and is alone a lot of times. Let's make sure that we optimize some of the things in our home.

You want to make sure that you get your medications checked. Side effects of medications can be drowsiness, dizziness. You want to make sure that there's not medications that are interacting with each other to cause those symptoms that will elevate your fall risk.

The second one is always get your vision checked regularly. Make sure that your vision is as good as it possibly can be, whether you need glasses or not. Get your vision checked because vision is absolutely essential for your balance. It's one-third of our body's balance system in terms of how it helps you stay up and active and mobile. The other thing relative to that is you want to make sure that you keep your house very well-lit. A lot of people will fall in the nighttime when they have to get up and go to the bathroom because it's dark. So it leads back to that vision. If your vision is not as good as it possibly can be and the lights are out, you're taking away one-third of your body's balance systems in terms of the sensations it requires to help you keep steady.

The next thing is, look around your house: throw rugs, cords that are running across the floor, any kind of object that's on the floor, narrow pathways. Those kinds of things can be disastrous with people who may not catch their balance if they lose it. If you're fortunate enough to have good balance, throw rugs aren't a big deal. You trip on the throw rug, and you'll catch yourself. But as you get older, that reaction might be much slower if you don't work on your balance regulary.

The other thing that you can do is exercise safely. Exercise is extremely valuable. The better shape your body is in, the better your balance is going to react. It's like keeping your car fine-tuned all year round. You gotta keep your body in shape. Exercise, exercise, exercise. If you're sitting a lot throughout your day, don't let it happen. Get up and move around. Take a walk every half-hour in the home and get your lungs moving, get your muscles moving, get a little bit tired with that. It will keep your body working at its optimum level.

More balance tips here: https://www.achievarehab.com/

Go to the website and download our book full of tips to help you have better balance.

In all, if you do have balance issues, you need physical therapy. Bottom line...the only thing that helps people with balance problems is physical therapy. AND!! It works...let us help you!