Multiple sclerosis and recovery from falls

SUBSTANTIAL INCIDENT:

I always explain the MS nerve delay like this: “Healthy folks trip over a throw rug and their other leg slams down on the floor and catches them. For me, by the time the message gets from my legs, to my brain so my brain can tell my legs to correct, I’m down” Today my left leg got stuck on a spot on my tile and my right leg slammed on the ground and caught me. That hasn’t happened in 20+ years and possibly 30. That’s big. 

That should start both of our weeks off well.

Diane

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Diane and I had a very interesting discussion of the above statement. She has had multiple sclerosis for decades. Falls are a major issue for her. Once they start they have up until now ended on the ground.

Just being able to avoid a fall was a huge thing for her. It happen in an instant without a concious thought. It just happened

Recovery from falls is not only an issue for MS patients but it is an issue for all of us particularly as we age. It has become a critical issue as baby boomers are aging in mass.

Simply defined when we trip, stumble or are thrown off balance our ability to "catch" ourselves can be quite literally a life saver. The ability to right ourselves can not only save us from injury or even death but also the staggering costs of hospitalization and recovery.

The secret to recovery from falls is stimulation to the bottom of your feet. This helps build and maintain the information super highway between the feet and the brain. As we have stated in the past the feet are sensory organs which help ground awareness. Ground awareness is our ability to perceive what is underfoot and to appropriately respond to all types of terrain. 

If the feet have little or no stimulation one can lose the reflexive responses necessary to respond to the onset of a fall. Shoes and flat surfaces do not help the sensory functions of our feet. Shoes and flat surfaces dull the foot senses serving as a type of sensory blindfold. 

A disease like MS also mutes the response. The delay MS contributes makes the person's response just too late to stop a fall. 

What Diane demonstrated was an instantaneous reflexive response. The skin reflexes and the deeper proprioceptive reflexes acted together to fashion this response. Any delay in this reflexive response and you quite simply fall down. 

Reflexology stimulates the sensors on the bottom of your feet. But other things can help as well such as going barefoot or rolling your foot on a foot roller. 

You get the idea. Stimulate, stimulate, stimulate to make those connections grow. And good connections can serve you throughout life. 

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5 Ways to Quickly Ground Yourself

© ERJNC . Image from BigStockPhoto.com
I was walking on the dewy grass this morning thinking about grounding oneself. I don't want to go too complex and talk about grounding your energy and all that. More I mean how do you make better contact with the earth. 

Because of being insulated from the ground with shoes, socks and hard surfaces like concrete we are prone to be more or less unbalanced. As we age this becomes a major problem as our loss of communication between parts of the body that help us integrate with the surface below becomes very fuzzy and out of tune. 

Unfortunately this can lead to a host of catastrophic events involving falling. And don't count on walkers and canes. They too have problems as 47,000 elderly take falls even with walkers and canes. 

The solution is actually quite simple. Here are 5 ways to quickly ground yourself. 

1) Walk on the dewy grass without your shoes. There is a type of spiritual harmony that comes through this mediative like walk. And it stirs up the connections silenced by shoes and hard, flat surfaces. 

2) Get a wobble board and practice on it. It seems impossible to maintain your balance at first using one of these contraptions. But overtime the subtle shifts of weight become easier and you depend less on supports like a tall chair to keep you from toppling over. 

The interesting part is the feeling you get after you have done this for a while. It is a sense of grounding. You feel your feet and the surface underneath as an interplay of motion on surface rather than some vague feeling. 

3) Walk on a cobblestone mat. The foot is not one big sensor. Rather it is a collection of a lot of sensors that sense pressure, stretch and movement. The foot is meant to respond to different terrain quickly and efficiently. In a faction of a second the foot should be able to quickly adjusting  to varying surfaces. 

Once again the sensory blindfold called the shoe dulls our movement senses. A "flat foot" meets a flat surface with mind numbing repetition. A cobblestone mat or even walking on the rocks in your garden can reawaken those silent areas in the brain once activated by the shifting terrain underfoot. 

4) Roll your feet. Roll you feet on about anything to light up the connection between the surface of the foot and the brain. My old standby is a couple of old golf balls dropped in a sock. Tie a knot and you have a pretty good foot roller. Again this introduces variety to the rather dull existence of a foot confined in a shoe. 

5) Rock your feet side to side. Let's face it we have about one way of walking - heel to toe. If you stand with your feet about shoulder width wide, bend your knees and gently roll across your feet from side to side you awaken all kinds of sensors that deal with lateral or side movements.

Here is your motivation to start now.  

"Falls in people older than 65 caused about 15,800 deaths and 1.8 million visits to emergency rooms in 2005, according to data from the C.D.C.’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control."  New York Times,  Study Warns of Hazards for Elderly Using Walking Aids by Derrick Henry, June 30, 2009

CDC - Falls Among Older Adults: An Overview Part 2

CDC - Falls Among Older Adults: An Overview:

"Many people who fall, even those who are not injured, develop a fear of falling. This fear may cause them to limit their activities, leading to reduced mobility and physical fitness, and increasing their actual risk of falling" CDC website

Yesterday I wrote about the cost of seniors falling. This fear factor as stated in the quote above is even more insidious. There is no question that movement is an important part of our well being. It is not just exercise but the very act of moving that is critical to health. We must move to stay healthy.

The more falls we have occurring the less movement takes place leading to a very sedentary older population. This is a downward spiral. Disease occurs when we fail to move about. The Russians as I stated in an earlier blog actually had people remain in bed for a year. The results were terrible with the loss of teeth, weakening of bones, depression and digestive malfunctions just to name a few. (I guess I would be pretty depressed to be in bed for a year.)

Weight bearing helps our system function. It makes bones stronger (remember teeth are essentially bone). Weight bearing improves circulation which is important for our cardiovascular system. It also improves blood flow to the brain which is important for mental health.

Here are the four geriatric giants: Memory loss/ dementia, urinary incontinence, depression and falls/ immobility. They are costing a terrible human toll. They also are costs billions of dollars each year in the US alone. And they are interconnected.

If one falls and fears that they may fall again the odds high that the four geriatric giants will be present from then on. The more immobility, the more the odds are high that a second fall will occur. The more the person fears falling the less they move. The less they move the less blood circulates and the more chance of memory loss and dementia.

And sitting in that chair with little or no movement the seniors become easy prey for depression.

We need programs of prevention to prevent falls. But we also need programs to help regain confidence once the person has fallen. We need to keep older adults moving.

Reflexology can help with both prevention of falls and recovery from falls. But there are other programs as well. We need to look at anything which will provide stimulation particularly to the bottom of the feet. It is this reflex action that needs regular triggering to keep things tuned up.

Kevin Kunz

http://www.reflexology-research.com

http://www.dk.com/reflexology

CDC - Falls Among Older Adults: An Overview

CDC - Falls Among Older Adults: An Overview:

"In 2000, direct medical costs totaled $0.2 billion ($179 million) for fatal falls and )19 billion for nonfatal fall injuries" CDC Web site

Can we really afford to ignore a major source of misery and monetary loss? And the worse part is that even if you don't kill yourself in the fall and remain relatively uninjured you still are in fear of falling again. This leads often to less moving about which leads to greater immobility. And the less we move as we all know the more stress we face and the greater our chances for more dire illness.

The CDC is trying to do something about this. I think the IShoe is a perfect example of what can be done with technology by creating a shoe that first analysis the weakness in the gait. Then in future development of IShoe it will help right the walker by amping up the signals from the feet to communicate peril.

But we can also do something less technological and very direct. We can start to recognize the importance of the feet in the overall communication system necessary for proper movement. There is a Japanese saying that we age from the feet up.

I think of it this way. As we age our brain talks less to our feet and our feet talk less to the brain. After awhile the feet and brain are like two people across a lake trying to communicate.

What are the options? Stimulation of the bottoms of the feet can be easily achieved not only by reflexology but by foot rollers, cobblestone paths, wobble boards and so forth. Exercising this communication system might take the form of rocking chairs which help stimulate the balance centers. We need to focus in on these locomotive and balance reflexes to tune and tone them up.

While we as a nation are trying to cut costs here is a place where real saving can take place. And that is not counting the saving of lives.

Kevin Kunz

http://www.reflexology-research.com
http://www.dk.com/reflexology

Wii-habilitation 'could prevent elderly from falls' - CNN.com

Playing the Nintendo Wii Fit could improve balance and help avoid falls in seniors, researchers taking part in a new study suggest.

Researchers in Aberdeen think playing Wii Fit may improve the elderly's balance and lower risks of falling.

The University of Aberdeen, Scotland and the UK's National Health Service (NHS) have embarked on a four month study on people over 70 to observe any changes in balance after regular use of the Wii Fit.CNN

I love the title WII-habilitation. Years ago they used video games with kids recovering from cancer. It was supposed to help them visualize destroying the bad cells. I am not sure how well it worked but it was definitely innovative.

But why not use games to develop our much neglected sense of balance. We were taught in school there are 5 senses like that was true. The sense of balance was ignored. But try anything with a thrown off sense of balance and life becomes a living hell very quickly. The world goes topsy turvy instantly.

The foot is linked in tightly to the balance system. I have used the WII Fit system with a great deal of interest. The platform you stand on detects your minute shifts in weight and registers them in the game you are playing. The Wii Fit system also measures your balance giving you feedback as to where your balance weaknesses lie.

But the best part is that it is fun. You can use your head to bounce back soccer balls while avoiding flying shoes and panda heads and improve your balance at the same time. Or you can ski your way to better balance. There is a whole category for balance alone.

The foot becomes smarter in the process. It learns to make small movements and not to overreact. It's adaptation to changes in balance become less rigid and smoother in response. That has to be good for the brain/ foot connection.

That is where we become weak with age. Our brains lose connection with the feet and the feet lose connection with the brain. The estimates on the cost of falls are in the billions. It is the leading cause of death among seniors.

I hope WII-habilitation becomes a craze among seniors and younger folks as well. It is not just the economic costs but the terrible human costs that must be considered.

Kevin Kunz

http://www.reflexology-research.com
http://www.dk.com/reflexology

Balance problems? Step into the iShoe

Really cool! I have been invited to a focus group for the new IShoe. The focus group will brainstorm on ideas for the IShoe.

The IShoe is a device designed to prevent falls with seniors It is a shoe bed like insert with a lot of sensors. It will signal the user as to their proper attitude.

It is also being to design to work with astronauts who have terrible problems with balance due to zero gravity.

Falls are one of the 4 "geriatric giants". The other three are memory loss, urinary incontinence and depression. But falls if they aren't deadly are very expensive. It is estimated that hip fractures are a 5 billion dollar a year cost in the US.

It will be interesting to see where the IShoe goes. It could save lives and have an impact on the costs of this problem.

Here's hoping.

Kevin Kunz

http://www.reflexology-research.com

Bumpy Brain Boosters

Barbara and I have been brainstorming in the mornings while walking on cobblestone mats. We have suddenly noticed how inspired we have become. We think it is all the mat walking.

Cobblestone Mats are all the rage in Asia and have been scientiifcally tested by Oregon Research Institute. They have been shown to help with blood pressure, pain and recovery from falls. It was an Institute on Aging study through the NIH.

Reflexology paths are spreading like wildfire across the globe. The biggest concentration is in Asia but they are they have takesn hold in Europe particularly in Germany. The US is just starting to discover the benefits of reflexology paths with 3 built in Washington State by the Park's Department alone.

The cobblestone mats were originally for indoor use when the weather doesn't permit outdoor participation on reflexology paths. The mats are are easy to use and very portable.

One note of caution is to be sure they are not on a slick surface like a wood floor. Carpet underneath is best.

We just started to casually talk about projects we are working on as we walked on the mats. What evolved was brain storming sessions. We found ourselves tackling tough problems and finding it easier to solve them. Is more blood flowing to the brain? Seems like it but a simple brain scan would tell you more. Unfortunately we don't have one here.

But the really interesting thing about Einstein was when they dissected his brain. Einstein's brain is actually smaller than the average size brain. There were a few differences in his brain but not as dramatically different as one might expect. One theory is that he simply had more blood pumping to the brain.

Brisk walking has been shown to improve blood flow to the brain. Could mat walking be helping pump more of this needed blood to our brains? Only more research will be able to test this hypothesis.

Will the business brainstorming sessions in the future have business people walking around on these mats while tackling problems. Our our government leaders taking on big challenges while pacing across these mats in their socking feet. Imagine the Pentagon planners shoeless and walking on mats.

Could be highly amusing yet very productive. We plan to continue with these bumpy brain boosters.

Kevin Kunz
http://www.reflexology-research.com