Brain Health Series - part 4 - fall prevention.
Elizabeth Goldberg, MD agreed to talk with me about very interesting aspect of aging and brain/sensory changes in nervous system that may predispose to falls. As a rheumatologist I vividly see how drastic life of my patients change after falls. Aging skeleton is one of factors that triggers falls, but it really is multitude cognitive and other components that we have power to change, or at least understand better and adjust, to prevent unfortunate series of events leading to loss of balance and falls. Few words about Liz Goldberg - she is an emergency medicine physician in Providence Rhode Island at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University-affiliated hospitals. She leads the GAPcare program (the Geriatric Acute and Post-acute Fall Prevention Intervention), funded by the National Institutes of Health that really got me excited and reason I connected with Liz. She is a grantee of Apple where she co-developed app for fall prevention and uses their watches to help adults prone to loss of balance. Her most recent venture is MyCOVIDRisk app that helps calculate Covid-19 infection risk and you can read about it in her recent publication on the topic, or even better - use her app. You can also follow her on twitter (@LizGoldbergMD) .
Back to the topic of the interview. We all get older, but it does not mean that with few helpful techniques we cannot prevent falls. It is my hope that this interview with Liz will increase awareness what you and I can do to avoid, or at least reduce, the falls risks. 18 minutes long which you can watch or listen to (on your healthy walk).
In interview we mention yoga as a fall prevention intervention that can help with mind-body connection, increase strength and balance to ultimately build and maintain healthy body that will make you age in reverse, and perhaps prevent falls as well. It is only appropriate that I remind here of the interview with my yoga teacher Carin. You can click button below to see that segment and maybe you will consider joining her gentle yoga class in person or remote.
