About one in every four adult older adults aged 65 and over fall every year, and this translates to over 36 million falls in the United States annually among among seniors. Falls are one thing, but one in every five results in a serious injury, such as a broken bone, or head trauma, or a broken hip. Hip fractures alone cause over 300,000 hospitalized patients every year in the USA, and they are followed by a decline in physical function, independence, and even mortality. Award-winning, nationally recognized physical therapist J Kele Murdin joins Suzanne Newman on the Answers for Elders Radio Show to talk about fall prevention.
Kele says, “If you ask a cardiologist what’s optimal aging, he’s probably going to talk about cardiorespiratory fitness. Right. Because his world is full of chronic diseases in the cardiac space. Family doctor might talk to you about someone who doesn’t have a lot of chronic diseases like diabetes and other things like chronic diseases that are going to really affect you. I’m a physical therapist, I’m going to talk about the physical aspects of optimal aging. So posture, flexibility, balance, strength, endurance, those are kind of the five areas of fitness for me personally, that’s in my wheelhouse. So I think optimal aging is a difficult thing to define because, again, your optimal aging path may be different than someone else’s. So I think vitality, independence are two key, those words can can capture it, but they can look different for different people.”
“Just being over 65 puts you at an increased rate of fall by 30% just because of the age changes that happen with joints and tissue and aerobic systems that you’re already at 30%. So if you have an ankle injury on top of that, that’s going to increase your risk even more.
“I think a lot of us, especially in the late sixties, early seventies, we don’t realize how much of a risk we are in our age group. When I think about if I wanted to tackle a new task, like go running, I said, Oh, I can run. And the person in my head is like 13 years ago, the person running in my head, I know how to run. And I think that’s true for all of us.
“So when when you think about going to dinner, you think about heels, a nice slim dress and walking down the stairs with your cute purse, because that’s that’s the memory you have from the last time you felt good going to dinner. And the reality is that could have been 20 years ago. And, you know, you haven’t actually worn shoes, but, you know, that’s that’s what we all struggle with. And then when we try to step into that person now with a lot with a bad foot arthritis in your shoulder, you know, and then then you’re really in trouble and you don’t realize it until you’re halfway down the stairs at dinner.
“I think that’s why falls are such a big issue. The situation is very specific to you, because of your physician, physical health and your medical history… I can’t create a fall prevention program for you that’s going to fit my aunt, because you guys both have different backgrounds and that’s what makes it so tricky. There’s so many factors that can play into falls and it’s very individualized. So there’s no one size fits all kind of program, which makes it complicated.”
Kele specializes in fall prevention and caring for older adults. She is the founder of Murdin Therapy LLC and Group Otago. Reach her at Murdin Therapy or call 425-306-0502. Groupotago.com offers group fall prevention exercise programs and has a ton of information.
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