Save money & live longer – avoid falls….

Today's post: Tuesday, 2-3-2009

A surprising number of older people are injured by falling down.

Of even more importance the medical bills from this damage cost millions of dollars a year; and many of the people who fall wind up with limited mobility and shorter lives.

But it’s close to 100 % preventable.

1. Preventing heart disease and cardiovascular disease prevents falls. If the circulation to your inner ear that you use to balance shuts off too much from cardiovascular disease, your sense of balance can leave you. So if you follow the practices to avoid heart disease, you also prevent falls from this cause.

2. If your bones in your legs or hips break, you can fall even if your sense of balance is still good. So if you keep your bones strong, you also prevent falls from lack of bone strength.

3. If your legs and core balance muscles are too weak, you can fail to recover from a sudden change in position even if your sense of balance is not too bad. Even a modest amount of strength training for your legs, back, and abdominal muscles will avoid you becoming that weak.

4. If you are out of practice at balancing and moving your feet to “catch yourself” if you get thrown out of balance, you can fall. Some kinds of balance practice have been shown to prevent falls.

Here are more details & solutions for these four potential problem areas.

1. Eat right and exercise regularly since a low glycemic diet with lots of vegetables and lean or plant protein and wild caught fish, omega 3 supplements, and extra virgin olive oil – and moderate amounts of red wine -- tends to keep your HDL high; your LDL and triglycerides and CRP inflammation low. So does regular exercise & NOT ingesting hydrogenated oils, refined grains, starchy foods, & avoiding excessive sugar AND drinking NO soft drinks of any kind.

The best exercise program for heart health combines some progressive strength training, some interval cardio, and some other kind of activity, such as gardening, yard work, or walking each week. Even 15 minutes a day of those kinds of exercise at home can do wonders.

That kind of exercise increases your HDL & lowers triglycerides which sharply lowers the small particle LDL that directly causes heart disease. Plus it lowers CRP inflammation and tends to prevent or turn off the insulin resistance that causes type 2 diabetes and excessively high blood sugar. Those two effects also prevent cardiovascular disease.

Get your key blood indicators tested so you know ahead of time if you are at risk and need to do better in this area.

Your HDL should be 40 or higher for sure. And well above 60 is better. Your LDL should be 129 or less and about 100 or somewhat less is better. Your triglycerides should be 150 or less for sure. And well under 100 is better. I’ve read your CRP test should be about 1.0 and not higher. And I suspect under 1.0 is better.

Similarly, your fasting blood sugar should be 99 or less and 89 or a bit less is better; & your HBA1C should be 5.8 or less. And under 5.5 is better.

Niacin; and choline; and eating berries and nuts; and grape seed extract; increase HDL. Choline is in egg yolk and wheat germ but it may be wise to eat those in moderation and take lecithin, which contains choline, or choline supplements as well. (Olive oil lowers LDL but leaves your HDL alone while high omega 6 oils such as corn and soy and canola tend to lower HDL.)

Niacin; and sterol supplements such as beta sitosterol and, for men, saw palmetto, lower LDL cholesterol.

Vitamin E and other antioxidant supplements such as vitamin C help prevent your LDL from oxidizing and keep your CRP inflammation low.

Wild caught fish, omega 3 supplements, and avoiding the fat of grain feed animals and high omega 6 oils such as corn oil helps lower triglycerides and CRP inflammation.

2. Eating right and getting the kind of exercise we just described tends to keep your bones strong. Strength training; interval cardio that uses your legs; consuming food high in calcium such as nonfat and very lowfat dairy products and beans and greens works better than calcium supplements; taking 2,000 iu or more a day of vitamin D; & NOT drinking soft drinks, particularly colas which leach out calcium due to excess phosphorous content – ALL help to keep your bones strong.

The drugs to improve weakened bones have been found to have health damaging side effects and have a death rate themselves.

So, practicing the good health habits above BEFORE your bones get weak is critical.

3. If you do some leg exercises as part of your strength training each week, your legs will be strong enough to help you avoid falls. Push ups strengthen your abdominal muscles and back in addition to your arms and chest because your abdominal muscles and back have to hold your body in a straight line while you do the push ups. Doing those plus some other abdominal exercises each week, will keep your core muscles strong.

4. For exercises that work directly on your balance, I believe in doing them where you are in a position to easily grab something solid and keeping your eyes open while you are doing them. (To do otherwise is to risk having your preventative exercises causing you to fall. So I don’t recommend that. )

An exercise I do is to stand in front of the mirror in our bathroom and do partial squats or kneebends on one leg. I’ve gotten good enough at moving my other leg, head and moving the foot I’m standing on that I can do 98 for each leg without having to catch myself even once with my hand or other leg most of the time. This also is a good strengthening exercise as well. But you can start with 3 for each leg and having to catch yourself on each one and improve from there.

If you like dancing, most kinds are excellent in giving you balance practice in a large variety of positions and using your feet well to balance yourself quickly. So that’s another good choice.

And, some senior centers are now getting in specialty balance training equipment that works. My suggestion is not to wait on using that but do something at home right away; and to do some of the at home exercises before you use it if you do get the opportunity so you do at least moderately well when you do use it.

So, if you do all four of these, your chances of falling go down a lot.

Lastly, stay inside or walk with extreme care in icy weather. Even people who are healthy in every way have been hurt by falls on icy places.