YOUR HEALTH Dr James Le Fanu: 16 August
When the pet column of The Daily Telegraph featured an ageing budgerigar described by its owner as being ‘aggressive, falling off his perch, eating well but experiencing difficulty with its droppings’, it struck one of the paper’s readers that this was ‘a nearperfect’ account of her own symptoms. Recently, an elderly acquaintance with a similar tendency to fall off her perch was so impressed by the improvement with a series of exercises, she has urged me to pass them on, in the hope that others might also benefit.
My acquaintance is in her late 80s and ‘remarkable for her age’, the only problem being that whenever her balance is only slightly disturbed, she falls over. There are, of course, many medical causes of falls, but her problem was simply a loss of stability. To explain: the human body, in engineering terms, is inherently highly unstable. The body structure of four-legged animals is comparable to a bridge whose main girder, the vertebral column, is supported by four pillars, otherwise known as legs. They thus have a large rectangular base of support, with the centre of gravity right in the middle.
We humans, by contrast, can best be described as forming a narrow upright pillar, whose centre of gravity runs through the much smaller rectangle made by the shape of our two feet. It is, in short, a miracle we do not fall over the whole time – for which we have to thank numerous compensatory mechanisms, such as position receptors in the muscles and visual cues from our eyes to keep us upright.
The system is so complex and sophisticated that it defies any simple explanation, but its many different components will inevitably become less efficient as time passes. This is why those of a certain age, such as my acquaintance, are vulnerable to repeated falls.
This may sound like ‘just one of those things you can’t do much about’ – but, in fact, it is not so. Regular exercises can improve stability in just the same way that working out in the gym improves muscular strength.
The first priority is to fortify the muscles involved in maintaining an upright posture, most obviously those around the ankle (flex and extend and hold for 30 seconds, relax and repeat) and the knee (slowly bend and straighten with one foot o the ground, repeating several times). The exercises specifically designed to improve balance include the ‘tandem walk’ (walking heelto- toe, holding on to a wall), as well as ‘balancing and reaching’ with all the weight on one leg, while leaning sideways to retrieve something from a shelf.
These exercises are certainly not rocket science, but they are a surprisingly new discovery. Until a few years ago, this type of agerelated fall was never perceived as something it might be possible to prevent. And the exercises work: since starting her regime, my elderly acquaintance has remained relatively upright.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk
This spontaneous cure of deafness would suggest it is almost certainly due to a blocked Eustachian tube leading from the middle ear to the back of the throat, resulting in uid building up behind the eardrum. The tube must have become unblocked during the night, allowing the fluid to drain away and thus curing the deafness.
My acquaintance is in her late 80s and ‘remarkable for her age’, the only problem being that whenever her balance is only slightly disturbed, she falls over. There are, of course, many medical causes of falls, but her problem was simply a loss of stability. To explain: the human body, in engineering terms, is inherently highly unstable. The body structure of four-legged animals is comparable to a bridge whose main girder, the vertebral column, is supported by four pillars, otherwise known as legs. They thus have a large rectangular base of support, with the centre of gravity right in the middle.
We humans, by contrast, can best be described as forming a narrow upright pillar, whose centre of gravity runs through the much smaller rectangle made by the shape of our two feet. It is, in short, a miracle we do not fall over the whole time – for which we have to thank numerous compensatory mechanisms, such as position receptors in the muscles and visual cues from our eyes to keep us upright.
The system is so complex and sophisticated that it defies any simple explanation, but its many different components will inevitably become less efficient as time passes. This is why those of a certain age, such as my acquaintance, are vulnerable to repeated falls.
This may sound like ‘just one of those things you can’t do much about’ – but, in fact, it is not so. Regular exercises can improve stability in just the same way that working out in the gym improves muscular strength.
The first priority is to fortify the muscles involved in maintaining an upright posture, most obviously those around the ankle (flex and extend and hold for 30 seconds, relax and repeat) and the knee (slowly bend and straighten with one foot o the ground, repeating several times). The exercises specifically designed to improve balance include the ‘tandem walk’ (walking heelto- toe, holding on to a wall), as well as ‘balancing and reaching’ with all the weight on one leg, while leaning sideways to retrieve something from a shelf.
These exercises are certainly not rocket science, but they are a surprisingly new discovery. Until a few years ago, this type of agerelated fall was never perceived as something it might be possible to prevent. And the exercises work: since starting her regime, my elderly acquaintance has remained relatively upright.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk
A TEMPORARY BOUT OF DEAFNESS
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a lady from Bolton, who about four months ago began to experience a mu ed echoing before becoming deaf in her right ear – accompanied by a sensation of thumping in the back of her head when walking. Her family doctor had a look but could find nothing amiss and arranged for her to see a specialist. ‘I made an appointment for some five weeks ahead, but two weeks later woke to find all was clear and my hearing back to normal’. What, she wonders, might have been responsible?This spontaneous cure of deafness would suggest it is almost certainly due to a blocked Eustachian tube leading from the middle ear to the back of the throat, resulting in uid building up behind the eardrum. The tube must have become unblocked during the night, allowing the fluid to drain away and thus curing the deafness.