Falls, fear of falling and fractures are a common and serious health issue for older adults or those living with frailty, and they can have a significant impact on a person’s physical and mental health and wellbeing, as well as in the ability to be, and remain, independent, and to participate in social activities and thus on the person’s overall quality of life.
However, falls and fractures in older people are often preventable!
A fall is defined as an event which causes a person to, unintentionally, rest on the ground or lower level, and is not a result of an intrinsic event (such as a stroke) or overwhelming hazard. Anyone can have a fall; it is a common but unfortunate result of human anatomy. However, as people become age and become more frail, they are more likely to fall.
The causes of having a fall are multifactorial. That means that a fall may be due to many different factors, or may be the result of the interaction between multiple factors.
Falls risk factors include (amongst many others):
- Muscle weakness
- Poor balance
- Visual impairment
- Some specific medical conditions, which might make a person more likely to fall
- Polypharmacy – and the use of certain medicines
- Environmental hazards
The likelihood and severity of injury resulting from a fall depends on a number of possible factors including bone health, risk of falls, frailty and low weight. People with low bone mineral density are more likely to experience a fracture following a fall. Osteoporosis is one of the reasons why people have low bone mineral density.
Over 3 million people in the UK have osteoporosis and they are at much greater risk of fragility fractures. Fragility fractures are fractures that result from mechanical forces that would not ordinarily result in fracture, known as low-level (or ‘low energy’) trauma. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has quantified this as ‘forces equivalent to a fall from a standing height or less’. Falls: applying All Our Health – GOV.UK
Fragility fractures are most common in bones of the spine, wrists and hips.
- Sitting all day dramatically negatively affects our bone health.
- Bones are living tissue, and they get stronger as you use them. When you are standing the whole of your body weight is loaded onto the skeleton and this activates the bone cells.
- When you are standing the whole of your body weight is loaded onto the skeleton, this activates the bone cells to strengthen.
- Inactivity and lack of weight bearing leads to increased risk of osteopenia & osteoporosis “brittle bones”.
- Fragility fractures are most common in bones of the spine, wrists and hips.