Fit Living

I’m always on the lookout for any kind of information that I think might help people prevent falls or live a higher quality of life. So I was pretty excited when I came across a new research review in the British Medical Journal recently.

The study found that older adults who take Vitamin D may reduce their chances of falling by up to 19%. The findings of this review were based on the combined results of 8 different studies done on people over age 65 who took either a Vitamin D supplement or a placebo.

What’s interesting here is that the reduced risk for falling was only found in people who took between 700 and 1,000 IU (international units) of Vitamin D per day. Doses smaller than that didn’t appear to help.

The U.S. Institute of Medicine currently recommends 400 IU per day for people age 51-70, and 600 IU per day for people over 70, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they raise those number soon.

You typically find somewhere around those amounts in most daily multi-vitamins, but this new study shows that may not be enough.

You’ve probably heard that your body produces Vitamin D when you’re exposed to sun. In fact, I’ve read that your body can make anywhere from 3,000-20,000 IU of Vitamin D when you’re outside depending on how intense the sun is, how long you stay out, your skin tone, and how much of your skin is uncovered.

So if you live in a sunny climate and are outside a lot, this may not be an issue for you. Just make sure you don’t burn. But if you don’t see the sun much in the winter, or don’t go outside much when it is sunny, ask your doctor about Vitamin D supplementation. It’s quite affordable, less than $10 for a month’s supply, and you get it at any grocery store without a prescription.

I recently read an article from American Bone Health that discussed the impending increase in falls and fall-related injuries among seniors. The National Council on Aging refers to this as the “Silver Tsunami.”

It’s really a simple concept – the huge baby boomer generation is arriving at older adulthood, and those years, as we know, are associated with an increase in falling. As this huge group ages, it’s likely that we’ll see a lot more falls.

The article the reviews some of the familiar risk factors:

1. Vision problems
2. Physical limitations
3. Side-effects from medication
4. Environmental obstacles that can cause one to trip

Here’s what you can do to make sure you’re not part of the Silver Tsunami:

* Talk with your doctor about your medications.
* Have your eyes checked.
* Do balance exercises several times per week.
* Strengthen your legs.
* Remove tripping hazards like electric cords, throw rugs, frayed carpet, etc.

Understand that while it’s impossible to eliminate your risk of falling, you can greatly reduce your chances with a proactive approach.

I've talked before about how your leg muscles are the most important muscles when it comes to living a high quality of life because they help you move around and stay active.

Leg muscles are so important that I think everyone over 60 should be training their legs at least twice per week. Combining leg strengthening with exercises for balance can go a long way towards reducing your risk of falling.

The reason leg strengthening is so important is because after a certain age, you will start to naturally lose muscle mass. This process is called Sarcopenia, and a recent study from the University of Nottingham in England looked a little deeper into why it happens.

They took two groups—one with an average age of 25 and one with an average age of 65—and gave them insulin before breakfast to see how the insulin would affect muscle breakdown.

When you wake up in the morning, you haven’t eaten anything for 8 or more hours, so your body starts to break down muscle for energy. When you have breakfast, your body should stop breaking down that muscle because now it has energy from the food.

For the younger group of participants, that is exactly what happened. The insulin, which mimics what happens in your body after eating breakfast, stopped the muscle breakdown.

However, in the older group, it did not, meaning that muscle breakdown continued.

Unfortunately, you can’t do much about how your muscles react (or don’t react) to insulin, but the researchers think that strength training of the leg muscles can slow or stop the loss of muscle.

What are you doing for your legs?

Here are a few things to get you started.

1. Walk or use a cardio machine that uses the legs several times per week for at least 20 minutes. Good cardio machines would be an upright or recumbent stationary bike, Airdyne, NuStep, rower, or elliptical.

2. Strength train your legs 2 or 3 times per week. Your health club should have a good selection of leg strengthening machines. At home, you can do the stairs repeatedly or do squats up and down from a chair as well as marching in place.

Don’t let that precious muscle wither away, because it’s so crucial to your independence.

Regular Exercise Reduces Your Risk of Falling!

The Journal of American Geriatrics Society recently published the findings of a team at the George Institute for International Health in Australia who reviewed 44 research trials involving over 9000 people that assessed the value of various approaches to fall prevention.

They found that people involved in exercise programs experience 17 percent fewer falls than people who are not.

The best results were seen in groups that focused on balance training, whereas walking programs did not appear to have much of an effect in reducing falls.

Researchers also noted that those who engaged in a larger amount of exercise, 2 days per week or more for over five months, saw better results than less regimented exercisers.

This further confirms that consistently doing balance exercises can lower your risk of falling.

It is recommended that you do something to train your balance at least three or four times per week, and preferably every day if you can.

Is Balance Trainable?
Balance is a trainable skill, just like riding a bike or playing the guitar. You get better with practice.

Most people don’t view it that way. Instead, they figure balance is something that’s good when you’re younger and just deteriorates as you get older. But balance is indeed trainable with the right balance exercises.

Think about a female gymnast that you may have seen in the Olympics on TV. They are able to run down a 4-inch wide balance beam, jump in the air and do a spinning flip and still land balanced on the beam.

Is this because they were born with a genetic disposition to have incredible balance? I think not! These girls practice every day for hours for years and years to be able to do these things. They start on a beam that is just a few inches on the ground, and they start with simple movements like walking forward and backward.

Over the years they progress to more and more advanced movements and to the standard-height beam. What’s happening during all that practice is the part of the brain that controls balance is learning how to control and coordinate the muscles and communicate with the sensors of the foot better.

The brain appears to have an almost unlimited potential to keep getting better at balance. Just take a look at high wire performers in the circus. That wire is probably only a quarter inch thick, not to mention fifty feet off the ground, and they make it look easy.

Practice.

Now what do you think would happen if a gymnast stopped practicing on the beam for a year? Do you think they would be able to get back up on the beam and do a spinning flip with a perfect landing? No. The brain’s balance center would have gotten rusty over that year.

Let me ask you this: Are you practicing balancing as often as you did when you were younger? Do you think that maybe your brain is a little rusty at balancing because of disuse? If that is true, and keeping in mind the analogy of the gymnast, doesn’t it make sense that if you practiced balancing more you could also improve?

The great thing is that you don’t have to spend as much time practicing as the gymnast or the high wire performer. You’re just hoping you can walk around on flat ground without falling over, which is much less demanding on the brain that walking on a balance beam.

But you still need regular practice several times a week.