The Mobility Blog Part 1-How To Reduce Your Risk Of Falling

 

 

The human body is a complex, biological movement machine. Not only is it designed to develop and maintain upright posture, balance, and stability into old age, but it also designed to regain upright posture, balance, and stability after an injury. It will do all this for you, providing you walk with your head upright and your line of sight towards the ground ahead of you with your feet contacting the ground from heel to toe engaging your core muscles.

Holding your head upright with your line of sight towards the ground ahead of you when you walk has multiple advantages:

• It maintains the alignment of your spine.
• It allows the wrist and hand on one side of the body to move forward and backward together with the ankle and foot on the opposite side of the body. This both lengthens and stabilizes the walking stride it also engages the core muscles that maintain the body’s balance, upright posture, stability, and alignment.
• Keeping your head upright is necessary to allow your feet to contact the ground from heel to toe to engage your core muscles. Core muscles are not just your abdominal muscles. They include the chest muscles, the muscles between the neck and waist, and the muscles between the shoulder blades that hold the head upright and align the spine.
• When you keep your head upright with your line of sight towards the ground ahead of you the way you drive your car it gives you a larger visual field. The size of your visual field is an important determinant of how much balance and stability your body has when walking and how fast your cognitive processing is that determines how fast you can react. Walking with the head upright permits you to react quickly, to stop or avoid obstacles in your path reducing your risk of falling. That’s why you drive your car with your head up, aligned, and centered over your shoulders with your line of sight towards the ground ahead of you. When you drive or walk with your head up and aligned and centered over your shoulders with your line of sight towards the ground ahead of you instead of towards your feet it gives you a wider visual field and allows you to see obstacles in your path and have enough time to move around or avoid obstacles.
• Drive your body the way you drive your car with your head upright and aligned and centered over your shoulders with your line of sight towards the ground ahead of you.

Your body was not designed to walk with your head down, looking at your feet. When you operate your body this way, your spine loses alignment with each step you take. Your body has less balance and stability and your core muscles become weaker making you more likely to fall.

If you walk with your head down:

• You lose spinal alignment.
• You lose the stabilizing benefits of smooth, contralateral motion. Your steps and walking stride become smaller, and your gait becomes unsteady.
• You lose the stabilizing effect of your feet contacting the ground from heel to toe engaging your core muscles.
• Your visual field constricts, so you see less and react slower. If you drove your car this way, you would crash.

When you walk with your head upright, you are operating your body as it was designed to work. You not only move better and are more stable, but you also get stronger and can walk farther because you’re engaging and strengthening your core muscles. You look and feel younger. In contrast, walking with your head down makes you look old. It guarantees your spine will become bent, you will lose the safeguards of balance and stability, you will react slower to the unexpected, and you will increase your risk of falling and getting injured.

When you look down at the ground in front of your feet as you walk you are more than four times as likely to fall as people who walk with their head upright and their line of sight towards the ground ahead of them in the direction they're moving. You can glance down towards the ground when walking without dropping your head down and see almost up to your toes. The only time you should walk looking down at your feet are on a staircase, in the dark, on a wet or slippery surface, sitting down, standing up or making a transition from one surface height to another. 

When you use a mobility device that maintains your balance, but not  your body's natural alignment, upright posture and a heel to toe walking gait that keeps your head upright and engages your core muscles you will have less balance and stability and increase your fall risk.  As Davis’s Law of orthopedic surgery about using muscles states, “Use it or lose it.” Watch ninety-nine-year-old English woman, Dinkie Flowers in the video below.

https://youtu.be/v60FkXqHcQY?si=acAy4uTAtFCaTU7n

 

Then ask yourself If sitting is the new smoking, what do you call walking looking down at your feet?

Read Part 2 of the Mobility Blog to learn how to stop walking with your head down.