Improving balance is key to so many improvements we can make in our lives, and is often an underrated aspect for most people.
It effectively impacts nearly everything you can do – from exercising, to walking, to going to the bathroom, to cooking a meal, to even just getting out of bed in the morning. Individuals who have poor balance experience a lot of trouble doing some (or all) of these activities. If you have issues with balance, physical therapy can help!
Balance problems can come from a variety of different sources. Medication side effects, anxiety, low blood pressure, muscle weakness, or vestibular problems can all cause issues with balance. As we age, several of these issues become more prevalent and likely due to our bodies’ natural aging process, medical conditions, and lifestyle changes. We begin to take more medications, we lose muscular strength as we age, and our vestibular system gets weaker, and often our lifestyles become more sedentary. These and more can affect our three systems of balance in a negative way.
Systems of Balance
We have three systems of balance that all work together to help us out. The first of those being your visual system. You use your eyes to see the world around you and orient yourself to it as well as to scan the surfaces you walk on for potential obstacles. Balance gets a lot trickier if you can’t see well, which is why sometimes when you are walking at night to go to the bathroom, balance is just a little bit harder! The second system is your somatosensory system – the system of touch/feeling. This system helps provide information to the brain about our environment through the sense of touch, usually through your feet when you walk. When you walk on solid ground it is a lot easier to balance then if you walk on some squishy ground. The third is your vestibular system, which is in your inner ear. When this system doesn’t function as intended, all sorts of things can go wrong!
The Inner Ear
Your inner ear (i.e. your vestibular system) detects where your head and body are in space. When these systems don’t work well, you can experience negative symptoms. You can experience nausea, lightheadedness, and/or vertigo (that feeling where your world is spinning). Your inner ear can be damaged by either injury or disease, causing you to experience some or all of these symptoms. Luckily, physical therapy can help address these problems and retrain your vestibular system!
Muscle Weakness
As we get older, our muscles get weaker. After age 30, the body tends to lose as much as 3-5% muscle mass per decade! When our muscles get weaker, ourability to maintain our balance can be compromised which can lead to falls. Falls can lead to a lot of adverse events, such as broken bones, concussions, and then further muscular weakness. If you ever feel like your legs do not support you when you try to stand up from a low chair, feel fatigue if you walk for a few minutes, or if you struggle going up/down stairs, your legs may be getting weaker. Luckily, physical therapy can help strengthen your muscles!
Bringing It All Together
Balance, like a lot of things, is more than meets the eye. All different factors could be affecting your balance, and more often than not, it is usually more than one thing. The biggest take away from this blog post is that poor balance is not something that you have to live with. A skilled physical therapist can assist in identifying the areas where you might be struggling and can help you work on improving those aspects. Get ahead of the curve and improve your balance so that you can have a higher quality of life doing the things you enjoy.
If you have any questions for Dr. Sam Cardona please feel free to email him at sam@imovephysicaltherapy.com. To start receiving physical therapy with iMove PT please contact us at 636.893.8312 or email at info@imovephysicaltherapy.com. We look forward to you joining our community! Thank you for reading and as always…Stay Home Stay Strong!