Fall Prevention Month 🚨 September 2024

How to keep ourselves and our loved ones from falling.

Every second of every day an older adult (55+) falls in the US.

I’m sorry, WHAT? That seems like a ton! Not all these adults end up in the hospital of course, but they are falling. Why? And What can we do about it?

September 23-27 is National Falls Prevention Awareness Week; so this month we are going to expose you to as much education as we can when we talk about falls and how to prevent them.

Falls occur for a few main reasons: lack of strength, coordination, vision, or hearing. We can address all of these with a few simple steps and a bit of consistent work.

LACK OF STRENGTH

Strength can diminish quickly if we take time off from our fitness classes or stop challenging ourselves. To prevent falls we need to be strong. This takes challenging yourself (your TOA instructor will make sure you are pushing yourself daily!) with heavy weight. The more you lift, the stronger you are, and the stronger you are the more support your joints have while moving.

We build our strong bodies in every TOA workout, but we also specifically address fall prevention with loaded carries, sit to stands, weighted transfers and any unilateral movement (single sided movement) we do. At TOA we program these in our workouts on a regular basis; so, if you’re keeping consistent, you’re golden!

LACK OF COORDINATION

It may seem silly to practice walking, walking with weight (rucking), bouncing balls so keep hand-eye coordination current. But, if we don’t use it, we lose it. We need to continue to walk, to move, to carry our groceries, to play with our grandchildren. All these keep us moving in different planes (directions) and increase our special awareness. We need to move around NOT be stuck to a machine. Daily movements, lead to strength within our day!

LACK OF VISION

Vision can play a big role in falling. This can be due to low lighting, aging eyes or not paying attention. We need to be sure that we keep up to date getting our eyes checked. They do age as we age. Our eyesight can diminish over time either for far away or up close. Both can affect our daily movements. You should be getting an annual eye exam to stay current on your prescription.

We also need to keep our house well-lit and free of clutter. This will allow our eyes to be working at their best. Increasing the amount of light into our eyes helps eliminate the tripping over the brown dog on the wood floor! Laugh if you will, but dogs get lost in the background when napping!

LACK OF HEARING

You may not instinctively think of hearing as playing a role in falling but it does. When we do not hear well, we miss environmental cues to changes happening around us. This can be people walking near, cars driving in a parking lot OR something simple like the different noise it makes when switching floor types (gravel to tile). This seemingly subtle difference can have a huge impact in our bodies and minds adjusting automatically to our surroundings.

We will all fall here and there, that is life. But how hard we fall and how often can be dictated by the efforts we put into our health.

We hope you will join us this September in Falls Prevention Awareness Week and stay consistent, create new habits, and schedule those checkups you’ve been avoiding. Remember the four areas of focus this month, feed them and watch your fall risk drop!

STRENGTH – COORDINATION – VISION - HEARING

https://www.ncoa.org/article/about-the-falls-free-initiative/

September 2024 ©BeSTRONGERFitness