**Transcript**
Hey, Dr. McNamara here coming at you guys with a Wellness Wednesday. Today I'm going to talk about balance, which is why I am balancing on the wobble board to give myself an extra challenge, to challenge my nervous system while I'm giving you guys these statistics on how we do balance and how balance is important to us especially getting on to our elderly stages of life our fall risk becomes a major proponent of hospitalizations and things like that.
Let me start with some, statistics. You probably didn't know this, but there's about 36 million falls that are reported among older adults each year. And this results in about 3,200 deaths each year there's about 3 million older adults that are treated in emergency departments for fall injuries.
One out of every five of these falls causes an injury where you have such as a broken bone or a worse, a head injury, which could, have many other effects even death, if not treated properly each year, there's approximately 300,000 older people that are hospitalized just for hip fractures. And we're still unsure on the science, whether it's the hip that's fracturing first, which is why we got to do strength training, make sure we have nice bone health, or if it's the fall that causes the actual hip fracture, that's still ongoing.
More than 95% of the hip fractures are actually caused that are caused by falling. Some are actually due to falling sideways. That's why we do a lot of glute strengthening in our office. That's why those glute medius muscles are so important. So we don't fall sideways and we're stable. And the last thing I just want to bring your guys' attention is sorry, ladies.
But generally we see in the statistics and the data that females are falling more than males and you guys account for three quarters of all hip fractures, which, it makes sense due to menopause and that the protective effect that estrogen does provide to that bone health. Just quickly, what is actually the physiological mechanisms for balance while the most important one is actually vision.
So make sure you guys are seeing properly. So you can interpret your environment around you. The next is in the ear and that's your inner ear canal, your vestibular apparatus. And you may experience certain types of dizziness. The most common being benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, that generally occurs later in life to go see a chiropractor or a specialist that can help with this. If you are experiencing kind of a head movement type of dizziness.
And then the last component, which is what I'm really working on right now is our actual proprioception and what we're feeling. Our body's receptors telling us where we're at in space during a given time. So for example, when I lift my hand up, I don't have to look at my hand to know it's there. I have receptors that are telling my brain that my hand is there.
Now, why is chiropractic so helpful for balance? A big reason is because we adjust that neck and majority of these proprioceptors are actually located in our neck. So many times you can get adjusted. And one of the results that we see from the adjustment is improved balance.
So make sure you get checked out. If you're having any type of balance issues, strength issues, go see a medical provider that can diagnose the proper issues that are going on and prescribe the proper exercise recommendations to get you better.
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