Aging and Improving Your Balance
Aging > Aging and Improving Your Balance
The aging process is accountable for many of the admissions to hospitals and health clinics in North America. Not only are people aging, they are becoming more and more inactive in their later years. This inactivity affects not only their physical activity level but it also has some effect on their balance. Balance is very important to the aging process because lack of balance is often the cause of falls that result in broken hips, elbows, and other parts of the body.
Improving your balance while you are aging is easy once you know what to do. There are many exercises that you can do safely in the comfort of your own home. Hand in hand with balance exercises is the need to improve your body’s overall strength. Many exercises will help you rebuild both your balance and your strength, and these are a great benefit to the aging process. For improving your body’s strength you will want to concentrate on lower body exercises. These lower body exercises are also a great help in maintaining and improving your balance. The types of lower body exercises that you can attempt are: hip flexion, hip extension, knee flexion, plantar flexion, and side leg raises. Start out by adding these exercise slowly into your daily routine and it won’t be long before you are seeing some improvement in both your balance and in your body strength. You should also attempt to do some knee extension exercises as this type of exercise is great for strengthening the muscles in your upper thighs, which are a great benefit to your balance.
When your body is aging you want to make sure that any exercise you attempt is done in a safe manner. If you experience any type of pain or discomfort you should immediately make an appointment to see your doctor. You do not want to injure yourself since the aging process makes any type of healing more slow and complicated. As you and your body are aging keep in mind to be gentle with yourself and understand why your body is behaving in the way that it is.