Balance practice becomes more important the older we get and we can always learn and improve on our baseline.
From the age of 40 our inner ear balance mechanisms, the little hair cells in our vestibular canals, start to break down. They in part give us the sensory orientation of our body in space.
Our body also relies heavily on our sight and perceived orientation to the horizon and also on the feedback from our joints muscles and ligaments. The latter is great news as we can train our brains to pay increased attention to our joint muscle and ligament feedback by practicing our balance exercises.
These exercises can start off being as simple as standing on one leg in a safe environment – eyes open and eyes closed.
When you close your eyes you will quickly realise how much you rely on your vision for balance and stability. As we are often distracted when we trip or fall it’s the speed of the feedback we get from our joints muscles and ligaments that determines our reflexes to catch ourselves and mitigate the potential damage of the fall.
The Physiotherapy Balance Department of the University of Queensland advise that we should all be doing 30 minutes of balance practice per week. So that is 5min/day 5days a week or a 30 min session once a week.
These exercises can be fun while being challenging and as a bonus they also strengthen your core control, muscles and joint stability – ask us here at Brisbane City Physio about the Balance exercises most suitable for you.
