Simple, everyday activities can strengthen balance

If you love tennis, golf, running, dancing, or any number of other sports or activities, working on balance buffs your abilities. Not an athlete? Just walking across the room or down the block requires good balance. So does rising from a chair, going up and down stairs, toting packages, and even turning to look behind you.
And good balance helps prevent potentially disabling falls.
There is a lot you can do to preserve and improve your balance, and it doesn’t take special fitness classes or exercises. Incorporating balance and strength activities into your daily routine could be enough to lower your risk of falling.
Researchers in Australia tested a program called Lifestyle Integrated Functional Exercise (LiFE) on a group of 317 people, ages 70 and older, who had fallen in the previous year. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: the LiFE program, a structured exercise and strengthening program, or a control “sham” program of gentle exercises.
Those in the LiFE program incorporated balance and strength movements throughout their day — for example, squatting instead of bending over to close a drawer, or walking sideways while carrying groceries from the car to the house. At the end of one year, the LiFE group had experienced fewer falls than the two other groups – a total of 172 falls, compared with 193 in the structured exercise group and 224 in the control group. People were also more likely to stick with the LiFE program than with the other two programs. To incorporate balance exercises into your daily routine, try standing on one leg while talking on the phone or sitting down in a chair without using your hands.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FASTING - Is it good for health?

Intentionally skipping or delaying meals, known as fasting, is an unusual practice for many people, but it’s gaining popularity as a way to prevent disease and maintain a healthy body weight. Proponents of intermittent fasting believe it’s better for your health to constrain your eating to just a portion of the day, allowing your body to go stretches of 12 hours or more without food. Intermittent fasting is not a diet, but a method of scheduling your meals to optimize how your body uses nutrients. This pattern of eating doesn’t change the total number of calories you consume each day, but alters the frequency with which you eat these calories.   Maxine Barish-Wreden, M.D. opens new window , a complementary and integrative medicine physician with the   Sutter Medical Foundation Opens new window , says doctors and researchers are realizing that our current eating patterns are contributing to the health epidemics of obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. She says intermitte...
Read more

World Renown Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong.. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries,today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact. I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.”  Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol. The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice. It Is Not Working! These recommendations are no lon...
Read more

Detection Tools for Alzheimer

Image
I posted earlier on the  Behaviors of Alzheimer patients . Here is an article on the detection tools. Early Detection Alzheimer’s Tests: What’s New By Sarah Stevenson on January 26, 2013 Read about the growing arsenal of Alzheimer’s tests, from simple memory testing for mild cognitive impairment to brand-new brain imaging applications. Photo credit: Akira Ohgaki When it comes to diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease, the prevailing mantra is “the earlier the better.” The problem, of course, is that there are many potential causes for dementia, and by the time doctors are able to detect mental decline, Alzheimer’s has already begun to irreversibly damage the brain. Not only that, until recently it was only possible to confirm an Alzheimer’s diagnosis through posthumous brain examination. Cutting-edge research in the field of Alzheimer’s testing promises to change the way we diagnose the disease, and that’s encouraging news. With a new battery of tests in the arsenal, doctors...
Read more