6/12/2023 0 Comments Lead coblyn the foot falls![]() By a sizable margin, the people who fell were more likely to have been bothered by foot pain than the people who didn't fall. They recruited about 300 adults, ages 60 and over, from Sydney and a region south of the city, identified those with foot pain and those without, and followed them for a year. In 2010, Mickle and her colleagues started to fill that gap with a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The studies that have been done have focused on high-risk groups, not the general "community-dwelling" population of older people. Other researchers have linked foot pain to a slow gait and poor balance, which is perhaps just what you'd expect.īut until recently only a handful of studies have investigated a more direct connection between foot pain and falls, according to Karen Mickle, one of a group of Australian researchers who have conducted many of the more important studies in this area. Investigators at the Institute for Aging Research, a research group based at Harvard-affiliated Hebrew SeniorLife, a long-term care facility in Boston, have found that foot pain seems to be a bigger factor in indoor falls than in outdoor falls. Over the past several years, there's been a surge of research connecting falls to foot pain and perhaps also to common foot problems like bunions and clawed toes. Rather, it's the injuries and chronic diseases (diabetes especially) that accumulate in old age that can make it a rough time for feet (and other body parts, too). You could be a hundred years old and have nary a problem. Hannan, co-director of musculoskeletal research at the Institute for Aging Research, says it's a little misleading to blame aging for foot woes. Surveys show that about 30% of older people experience foot pain from these and other problems.īut Marian T. Bunions and claw toes can throw off the foot's biomechanics, creating "hot spots" of extra pressure that can be painful. And older people - especially older women - are prone to developing bunions, a misalignment of the bones in the big toe that causes the end of the metatarsal bone at the base of the toe to angle out. Older toes have a propensity toward curling into "claw toes" because of muscle imbalance. Arches falter, so there's a tendency for the feet to flatten out. Research has undercut the notion that the fat pads under the heel and the ball of the foot get thinner with age, but the tissue may change in other ways so that it provides less cushioning.Īge also tends to bring on structural changes. Blood is more likely to pool in veins, which causes feet and ankles to swell. ![]() ![]() The long nerves that supply them don't send electrical messages as efficiently as they once did, so there may be some loss of sensation. The feet, like the rest of the body, feel the effects of age. Young, spry feet can repeat this thousands of times a day and feel no pain. As the foot rolls forward, the pressure shifts to the outside edge and then, as you start to push off, to the ball of the foot and the toes. ![]() Walk fast, and the force of that impact is even larger. But when you walk, the force on the heel when it hits the ground is up to about 1 times your body weight. When you're standing still, the force from your body weight is spread fairly evenly. The lowly feet have to be capable of handling high-pressure situations. Foot problems and pain get mentioned in the roll call of risk factors, but usually near the end and frequently as an afterthought. Roughly 18,000 older Americans die each year from injuries sustained during a fall.Įverything from slippery throw rugs to poor lighting to side effects from multiple medications has been implicated as a risk factor for falling. Some of those injuries (hip fractures especially) lead to disability - or worse. Besides, a significant minority (between 5% and 10%) of falls among older people do result in a major physical injury - broken bones, serious cuts, bad bangs to the head. But they can be frightening, and even if there's little physical harm, people sometimes develop a strong fear of falling. Each year, about one in every three older Americans takes a tumble, and the chances of falling increase in our 80s and 90s.įortunately, most of these falls result in only minor scrapes and bruises, if that. But starting in about our mid-60s, remaining perpendicular is not such a sure thing. Taking care of your feet could improve your chances of staying on them.įor most of our adult lives, we can take it pretty much for granted that once we're upright and on our feet, we'll stay that way.
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