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Keep Your Balance!

By Jan Larraine Cox

We’ve all lost our balance at one time or another. It’s usually not catastrophic, but maybe an injury slowed us down at an inconvenient time. This past June, I was rushing on a restaurant’s bumpy and wet patio floor, and although I did see the orange and white cone placed there, I tripped on the uneven surface and did end up spending months recovering. Why not learn to maintain balance and continue with life’s agenda as planned? Maybe I can help you prevent the same sequence of events through my unfortunate learning experience.

The National Council on Aging reports that one quarter of Americans over 65 fall each year. This is connected to both aging and the lack of physical activity, both of which lead to weakness and brittle bones. Age-related muscle loss begins in one’s 40’s and continues until in our 70’s, when we’ve lost half of muscle mass – unless we fight the process, with resistance or strength training, for example. Our legs need to carry us while we walk and stand, and be strong enough to climb stairs, resisting gravity.

Balance keeps our weight distributed in such a way that we can stay upright, whether standing or moving, thanks to strong muscles and bones enabling us to maintain a center of gravity. With a physical therapist, find exercises that increase strength and mobility while preventing a fall. Remember to warm up, with motions like marching in place, shoulder rolls and arm swings.

Your balance system aids in changing position from sitting to standing, and good balance keeps you cognizant of the position of your head in relation to the ground. Your brain coordinates sensory information retrieved from your eyes, inner ear, the bottoms of your feet, and joints in the ankles, knees and neck. Then the brain delivers a signal to muscles throughout the body and how best to react while maintaining position. All this information lets you know how you are oriented in space and the speed and direction of your motion.

So, how do we keep ourselves balanced all day as we move around from sitting to standing positions?

Your body has a system of balance:

First, your eyes record the body’s position and surroundings. When light hits the photosensitive cells of your retina, it generates electrical impulses that are communicated to the brain through the optic nerve. Your brain interprets these signals as images which then tell you how fast you’re moving relative to someone walking beside you, for example.

Second, millions of nerve cells called neurons, are located in your skin, muscles and joints. When they are stimulated, they send electrical impulses to your brain about what your body is doing. Especially important is information about which way your head is turned and how steady your ankles are on the ground.

Finally, your vestibular labyrinth is your primary balance organ and it is in your inner ear. We may not be aware of it, but the brain relies on its input for balance, especially when information from the eyes, joints or bottoms of your feet is disrupted in some way.

So, in order to maintain your balance throughout the day, at least two of the three—eyes, musculoskeletal nerves and vestibular labyrinth—must be working well to prevent dizziness and a fall.

Balance 2.0 by Amanda Sterczyk, Kindle Direct Publishing, 2020.

Mayo Clinic: on Better Hearing and Balance, Wayne Olsen, PhD, Medical Editor-in-Chief, Mayo Clinic Health Solutions, 2008.