Are You Falling For Us? Part 1

Falls within adults are stated as the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths in the world by the World Health Organisation, and what are 2 of the main causes for falls?

Well according to the NHS the natural ageing process can lead to poor balance and reduced muscle strength making falls more likely.

Here at Peak we couldn't agree more which is why every client of ours has their balance and muscle strength assessed as part of their initial consultation. The only caveat to the above statements is this, the natural ageing process does lead to poor balance and reduced muscle strength, unless appropriate intervention is made and maintained.

Everything naturally deteriorates, that is nature, unless action is taken. The same way our teeth and gums naturally deteriorate unless there is proper intervention from a young age and maintained through life.

When we assess a client’s balance we are actually assessing how well a very particular part of the brain can communicate to the body. That particular part of the brain is called the cerebellum, it is positioned at the back of the brain directly above the spinal cord. It receives information from the body's joints, muscles, ears and eyes and makes postural adjustments to maintain your balance. When joints subluxate which means they are not communicating properly to the brain then this information is slow and of poor quality therefore the postural adjustments made are of the same nature. We often refer to this as rubbish up to the brain means rubbish down from the brain.

Clients tend to have one of two reactions to this, either “great now not only are you telling me how good or bad my balance is but you are also telling them my brain doesn’t work properly” , others… are jokingly quite happy their brain works at all. But on a serious note we are telling them the above but we also aren't.

All we are doing is explaining why. Measuring balance and telling a client if they are below normal or dysfunction is not helpful unless you can explain why, and more importantly how we can improve it. Without knowing why we couldn't confidently predict how to improve it.

So, how do we improve balance?

To find out you’ll have to check out our next blogs!