A Balanced Life
Living longer, happier and on your feet
We all lose our balance occasionally, sometimes resulting in injury. Falls to different levels usually cause more severe injuries and sometimes death.
Falls on the same level are the number one accidental cause of injury and death among those over 65 years of age. Those with the additional burden of osteoporosis face an even greater threat if they break a fragile hip.
We owe our propensity for falling to something we don’t fully understand – gravity. Yes, it keeps us from floating off into space, but it has a downside too; not to mention our sagging skin as we age. Those waddles un-der the chin droop a little closer to the Earth’s core daily.
A dear friend of a certain age recently fell and broke her hip, requiring a surgical hip replacement. It was a throw rug, the serial killer of aging seniors, that caused her fall.
If my friend had osteoporosis (she does not), she may not have been eligible for a hip replacement, and the injury may have never healed properly, even with treatment.
So, staying in shape as we age is much more than just walking and eating healthfully. We must endeavor to maintain our equilibrium and strength as we age to avoid falls.
Being proactive when it comes to anticipating falls caused by loss of balance can make the journey through our latter years one with full mobility and a confident stride. Minimizing falls will take a little work on your part, which will be covered in the second part of this article.
One in four older adults will experience a fall annually; that’s 14 million of us. Of those who fall, 37 percent report an injury that results in medical treatment or restricted activity.
Then, there are those with a disease called sarcopenia. This dreadful disorder causes the body to lose skeletal muscle mass and strength. Age, level of fitness, and gender are all risk factors for sarcopenia, and a whopping 45 percent of women will develop this syndrome as they age. Falls are a massive risk for those with sarcopenia.
As we shall see shortly, balance is maintained by three different systems with-in our bodies: the visual, proprioceptive and vestibular systems. We will dive deeper into these systems a bit later.
In the following article, we’ll examine how falls affect us and how we may minimize fall injuries through maintaining balance and strength, the key to fall prevention.
Dancing with a rock
Having been a rock climber for several years before I met the ballerina, I had never thought much about the mechanism that results in balance, equilibrium, stability and footing.
Like most of us, I took the complex system of maintaining equilibrium despite the body’s orientation for granted.
Carol, a friend and occasional climber, asked me to take her sister Marilyn, a former gymnast, rock climbing but warned me not to let her get hurt as she was a ballerina in training.
I agreed, and on one bright June morning, our team of four climbers, including Marilyn, was sitting on a ledge at Seneca Rocks sorting the equipment with 300 feet of vertical to slightly overhanging Tuscarora Sandstone rising above us.
Marilyn was fit, no doubt about that. Meanwhile, the other two students, both men, had muscles to spare and didn’t hesitate to use brute strength to advance up the sandstone wall.
The young woman couldn’t have weighed more than 90 pounds, petite for sure. Marilyn was so thin she’d have to run around in the shower to get wet. Her muscles were long and sleek, conforming perfectly to her diminutive body.
But when Marilyn tentatively but confidently started up the wall, the others and I would be treated to a way of defying gravity that I had never had the pleasure of observing before. Marilyn’s performance resembled a vertical dance with the rock; it was stunning.
I don’t think Marilyn broke a sweat, and she climbed silently and purposefully, and her climbing appeared effortless.
Often, but not always, male climbers approached climbing as something to be overcome through muscular power. When the men climbed, they relied on brute strength to pull themselves up to the next hold. They generally favored the larger holds, so-called “jug holds.” Often, you could hear the heavy breathing and even grunting when the men lunged for holds.
Marilyn’s approach to climbing offered a glimpse of an athlete not relying entirely on muscular strength, which she no doubt had in spades. Moreover, she seemed to float up the wall rather than attack it.
When you think about it, her performance on the rock required excellent balance and strength, which you can also have.
Marilyn’s climbing strategy convinced me there was much more to climbing than bodybuilding alone would allow. At the end of the climb, she had expended much less energy than the others, and it offered us the bonus of witnessing such calculated and graceful movements.
Many people today, young and old, stay healthy through aerobic exercises like walking, running, swimming or cycling. Those who care about their health also eat healthfully and may include other activities like yoga or pilates.
These health measures are all good things, but I suggest becoming aware of your equilibrium and tweaking your routine to include balance exercises. More on that later, we must first examine the complex and fascinating system that keeps us bipeds on our feet.
You have rocks in your head; really, you do!
Our ability to maintain balance involves several complex systems working in unison. We’ll start with the ear, because that’s the last bodily organ we would suspect of being in charge of balance.
The National Library of Medicine describes the vestibular system as providing “a sense of balance and information about the body position that allows rapid compensatory movements in response to both self-induced and externally generated forces.” In other words, our body has a system that attempts to keep us upright and balanced at all times.
The vestibular system resides in the inner ear interior to the tympanic membrane (eardrum). The cochlea looks amazingly like a snail. Indeed, the word in Latin means snail and plays a pivotal role in hearing. The cochlea does not have any involvement in maintaining equilibrium. One must wonder why the cochlea is attached to the organs responsible for balance, yet there it is.
Three fluid-filled semicircular canals are situated opposite the cochlea at right angles. The semicircular canals help maintain balance by signals sent to the brain when head movement causes the liquid to slosh around, moving the tiny hairs attached to the wall of the canals.
Situated between the cochlea and the semicircular canals are the utricle and saccule. Like the semicircular canals, this vestibular system function comprises a gel-like fluid, sensory hairs and one more item: rocks.
The calcium carbonate crystals in the otolith organs (saccule and utricle) are tiny and serve to help us maintain equilibrium by detecting orientation and motion. Imagine starting your car and heading down the driveway. The “rocks” move in the opposite direction of the forward motion, stimulating the hair cells to send the data to the brain. We now feel the sense of forward motion.
So, you really do have rocks in your head.
In the next episode of For Your Consideration, we will connect the vestibular system in the inner ear with the brain and muscles required to correct any instability in equilibrium. Then, we’ll explore how and why we can maintain our balance for many years, and it’s pretty easy to do.
Ken Springer
ken1949bongo@gmail.com
