Falling at any age can be traumatic, shaking a person’s confidence and possibly create significant injury.  Falls make up more than 80% of injury related hospital admissions in seniors over age 65, making fall prevention even more important.  Lambert Chiropractic Health Centre in Mississauga, ON, works with people of all ages, but particularly seniors, to improve body balance.

Why Do People Fall?

The risk of falls increase with leg, foot and ankle dysfunction, changes in gait (how the legs and spine move when walking) and balance disorders.  Accidents can happen. Proper function however allows an individual to effectively respond to a sudden misstep, tripping hazard or unseen obstacle and regain balance to avoid falling.  Body balance and its management is the product of a complex integration of information from all over the body.  Information from the inner ear, eyes, neck, back, abdominal organs, leg joints and many other sources, get processed by the brain to identify where a person is located in three dimensional space.  The information travelling through nerves from all these body parts should flow like cars on the highway without any obstructions.  If an injury, stress or illness changes any of these body parts, it creates a traffic jam in this highway system.  Traffic jams slow or corrupt the information being delivered by nervous system.  This impacts the brain’s ability to determine where a person is positioned, and slows the body’s response time, leading to falls.  Nervous system dysfunction leaves a person potentially vulnerable to falls.

How Do You Determine If You Are At Risk of fall?

A simple self assessment will bring to light issues that you may not have paid attention to previously. 

- When you walk, is it a smooth swing of the legs and pivot through the feet and ankles?  If you notice that one leg moves differently, or you are not standing completely straight when you first start moving, this indicates that there is stress somewhere in your nervous system. 

- When you stand in front of a mirror, are your shoulders and head square and level?  If you notice a head tilt or a high shoulder, rotated hip, your nervous system is having difficulty keeping you balanced. 

- If you close your eyes while standing, do you begin to sway or fall?  If you are not confident with standing while yours eyes are closed, the nerve signals from the body are being slowed in a traffic jam and are not being delivered to the brain fast enough to help you keep your balance. 

There are many other indicators that Dr. Lambert at Lambert Chiropractic Health Centre will assess in a clinical setting to better understand the decrease in nervous system functions.

What Does A Chiropractor Do To Improve Balance?

Dr. Lambert at the Lambert Chiropractic Health Centre will first complete a detailed analysis of every case.  This examination process will identify where the break-down in communication is occurring in the body leading to poor balance.  The research shows the benefits chiropractic care has with improving balance and stability.  Using the knowledge from research and incorporating the individual’s exam results, chiropractic adjusting techniques will be chosen and used to improve the nervous system function and joint mobility.  Chiropractic care improves balance and coordination. Whether you are a senior concerned with falling, or an athlete seeking improved performance, contact Dr. Lambert at (905) 271-5557 so that he may help you with your balance.

1. Holt KR, Haavik H, Lee ACL, et al.  Effectiveness of chiropractic care to improve sensorimotor function associated with falls risk in older people:  A randomized controlled trial.  J Manip Physiol Ther 2016; 39(4): 267-278.
2. Kendall JC, Vindigni D, Polus BI, Azar MF, Harman SC.  Effects of manual therapies on stability in people with musculoskeletal pain: A systematic review. Chiro Man Ther 2020: 28(13). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12998-020-0300-9.