Benefits Of Exercise For Fall Prevention & Balance

What causes balance problems I'll explain stay tuned. Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg

with Wellness For Life and if you'd like to truly master health by understanding

how the body really works make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification

bell, so that you don't miss anything. Balance is a really big deal because

when you don't have it life becomes a challenge and more so falling is the

number one cause a traumatic death in the elderly and we're all heading that

way so it'd be good to know something about balance so that we can practice

and improve it before it's too late so I'm gonna start by explaining the

mechanics and the components of balance and then we're gonna move in to some

exercises so that you can learn how to improve these things yourself so when

you're standing up and you're just relaxing and maintaining your balance it

looks as though you're kind of standing still but you're always falling a little

bit you're falling forward and back and right and left but your body is

compensating so quickly your brain is processing and compensating so quickly

that it looks as you're standing absolutely still and the obvious example

of one that isn't working so well is if someone is drunk because now they're not

compensating so fast and they're moving all over the place and in the case of

being drunk obviously the alcohol is interfering with the cortex and the

cerebellum so your broader can't process appropriately but there's all kinds of

other reasons why you may not be able to process including degeneration. Neural

degeneration happens to all of us and we want to make sure that we slow it down

so we have as much left as possible for as long as possible so let's look at

whether the components in order for balance to work your brain needs

information and there are three inputs we have vision we have vestibular input

and we have proprioception so vision is pretty obvious it's you

look you see what things look like and the brain uses that information to

maintain balance. Vestibular that's the inner ear thing

that's your semicircular canals and the cells that that transmit that

information to the brain and this is the classic place for in the medicine in the

medical world they always focus on the inner ear first because if you have many

years if you have an inner ear infection if you have those stones are a little

bit off-kilter than you could have balance problems you get a vertigo and

dizziness and nausea and things like that but that's only one part and those

are actually kind of rare most balance problems and most vertigo is more subtle

and it's a problem with degeneration or incorrect or in not enough capacity to

process and the last one is proprioception so your body sends

information to the brain all the time and proprioception is all the

information that every fiber and every cell is sending to your brain so that

your brain knows where the stuff is and your brain has never heard or seen

or touched or felt anything the brain only knows where the body parts are

because the body parts are sending information to the brain and that's

called proprioception so when all of this is working

we have great balance we have the visual vestibular and the proprioceptive input

the brain takes all of that input it processes hundreds of millions billions

bits of information every second to create a picture to send information to

the musculoskeletal system which is of course all the joints and muscles and

then all of those cells all those body parts have receptors that they send

information back to the brain in the form of proprioception so it's a it's a

can tenuous loop that allows the brain to

know where things are and to maintain balance by issuing the appropriate

commands. So poor balance is when any one of these steps is compromised if we have

poor visual input if we have poor vestibular input or if you have poor

proprioceptive input or if the processing isn't keeping up if we have

some brain degeneration which happens with aging it shouldn't happen with

aging but it does because we are toxic and we are degenerating we are inactive

and so forth and if the musculoskeletal system wasn't sending enough we don't

move enough then the brain isn't getting enough proprioception so that's what

causes poor balance that's what causes balance problems but we can also do

something to improve on it and the visual is the least commonly involved

because most people are so on line with their vision that's not something that

varies a whole lot it's the other two that vary tremendously and those are the

ones that we can work on so how do we do this well it's really simple so when you

do this exercise you want to go where you can hold on to something I recommend

a doorframe so that you can stand securely in the middle and hold on to

both sides while you're trying these things out you also if you have some

balance issues or if you're not real sure make sure that you have someone

with you to watch you and catch you and guide you and let you know what's what's

happening but at least start with the door frame so you can hold on tight and

then what you do is you close your eyes and now what happens is you're taking

out one third of the input for balance so if the other two parts are working

perfectly then two out of three is still enough if I close my eyes now then I

still have good balance and you may be able to see a very slight sway but

probably not much at all people who have balance problems again you don't want to

do this without having someone watching but if you close your eyes you probably

start seeing about a half inch or an inch of sway and it might be more to one

side and that indicates that the problem is more one-sided which is very typical

so then what you do is you hold on to the doorframe and then you lift one leg

so you lift one knee so you're standing on on one leg and then you hold on and

you hold on very lightly and then you close your eyes and what you notice is

that that foot starts acting it starts working a lot the muscles start working

twice as hard they start working really really fast and what they're doing is

they're increasing the proprioception so because we took the vision out we are

relying on the other two now they have to increase their activity to keep up

the more you work at this the more you activate those pathways and the more

that you will exercise those systems and if you exercise them on a regular basis

then you increase the strength of those pathways it's just like a muscle you

work out if you work out a muscle it grows bigger if you work out a pathway

it grows bigger and it gets better so by taking out the vision we can improve we

can strengthen those other two so work on this you stand in the doorframe you

hold on very lightly and then as you get better and better at this now you can

hold on less and less and less until you

don't have to hold on at all and if you work this for a while and you get really

really good at it you should be able to stand up to 30 seconds on one leg with

eyes closed that is how fantastic the body is when

all of these systems are working together at a 100% so remember to start

very very carefully hold on with both hands have someone there if you're not

real sure and then have some fun with this and let me know how long you can

stand on one leg let me know if there's a big difference between left and right

for example and write me some some comments if you have some questions

let's see you can can stand the longest if you're new to this channel you enjoy

this kind of information make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification

bell so that we can keep this content coming your way and most importantly

this information every video on this channel is about improving your health

it's about saving lives it's about improving function so that we can live

longer and live better and everyone needs that thanks for watching