How’s Your Balance?
Balance is essential at all ages, but did you know that your balance is directly tied to your longevity?
A study conducted in 2022 focused on over 1700 participants between the ages of 50 and 75 who had no previous balance or walking problems.
Researchers concluded that people who couldn’t stand on one leg for over 10 seconds had an 84% greater chance of dying within seven years compared to those who could.
But what causes your balance to fail, and what can you do about it? Further, how long should you be able to stand on one leg?
There are four major systems responsible for maintaining balance:
- The cerebellum (an area of the brain)
- The eyes
- The Vestibular system (a sensory system in your inner ear)/strong>
- The musculoskeletal system
Ultimately, all pathways lead to the brain, specifically the cerebellum. The cerebellum controls muscle tone, limb and joint position, and finely tuned movements to regulate balance throughout the body.
You can sense the cerebellum in action if you close your eyes and tune into your postural “sway.” You’ll notice you don’t stand still. Instead, your body sways from front to back, side to side, and sometimes in a small circle. As we move, our brains detect even the slightest shift in position and signal the muscles throughout the body to contract to maintain balance. That’s all due to your cerebellum.
Balance messages don’t just come down from the brain, though. They also travel up from the muscles, tendons, and joints, which have special sensor cells that can detect exactly where the bones and joints are in space.
As we move, bend, twist, jump, crawl, walk, and run, special cells called proprioceptors relay changes in muscle length and joint position to the brain, enabling quick adjustments in muscle tone and activation.
Our eyes can also play an essential role in balance. Like our muscles and joints, our eyes work with the vestibular system in the inner ear to perceive our position in space. The input from the eyes and ears travels to the brain, which relays messages back to the muscles and joints to maintain muscle tension.
Therefore, blurry or double vision or damage to the vestibular system can jumble the messages to the cerebellum and wreak havoc on our balance, leading to dizziness or instability. So, make sure you have your eyes checked regularly and seek the help of an ear, nose, and throat doctor if you’re experiencing any of those symptoms.
Finally, aside from some neurological disorders, posture can affect balance. Specifically, rounded shoulders and a forward head position change the position of the eyes and the vestibular apparatus, leading to increased muscle tension in the shoulders, upper back, jaw, and head and a decreased sense of balance.
Other postural changes that can put us at risk of falling include changes in the position and muscle tension in the pelvis, knees, and feet. These changes come in the form of feet that turn out, a pelvis that tucks under, knees that rotate in, and feet that either collapse or roll to the outer edges. These are signs that your body is struggling to maintain balance and relying on muscles and other structures unsuitable for the job.
Therefore, if your eyes and ears are working well and you want to improve your balance, start with your posture. Strength alone isn’t sufficient if it’s not applied to the major postural stabilizing muscles that pull the body upright and into the correct anatomical position where all the joints are aligned.
Your posture doesn’t need to be perfect, either. It just needs to be better than it is now. Statistically, once you can stand for at least 30 seconds on one leg, you should be as strong and stable as you need to be to ward off issues around balance.
So, what can you do to improve your posture?
Yoga, Tai Chi, hiking, biking, strength training, and maintaining an active lifestyle can all help.
Select Healing also offers many options: You can request a personal posture consultation, purchase one of the courses for back pain or chronic pain, or join us for our Sunday Stretch, where we take your whole body through functional motion to help you improve your flexibility, strength, posture, and balance.
The bottom line is that by improving your posture and balance at any age, you may also be adding years to your life.
