Could Your Senior Have Some of These Risk Factors for Falling?

As your elderly family member ages, it’s important to understand how she can be at greater and greater risk of experiencing a fall. If your senior is experiencing any of these risk factors, there might be something that you can do to help her to avoid injuring herself.

Her Health Is Fragile

Fragile health affects every aspect of your elderly family member’s life. She has higher risk in so many ways, but also in terms of mobility. She may find that joint pain, blood pressure issues, or other health concerns make getting from one point to another much more complicated. All of that contributes and creates a situation in which she can often feel unsafe, even to the extent that she stops moving as much as she should.

Her Vision Is Failing

Your senior’s vision is closely tied to her fall risk. If she’s experiencing changes to her vision, that’s going to contribute exponentially to her possibility of falling. Some vision issues may be at least partially correctable with the use of corrective lenses or other treatments. But there may be solutions you can try at home, too, like installing more or brighter light bulbs. Contrasting colors can also help her to see things like the edge of a rug or the edge of a stair tread.

Her Balance and Gait Are Off

Your senior’s ability to walk safely involves a lot of different factors, but mechanically speaking, her balance and her gait both affect her ability to walk properly. If your elderly family member is walking in a stilted way or needs to balance herself on walls or furniture as she’s walking, that can indicate that she’s got some bigger issues going on as she’s trying to walk.

She’s Not Very Active

The less active your senior is, the more all of these different factors are going to affect her ability to be safe while she’s walking. The more sedentary she is, the more muscle mass she’s going to lose over time. That contributes to the problem and becomes a vicious cycle that can become worse if she doesn’t make any changes.

Working with elderly care providers helps you to put solutions in place that can compensate for these risk factors. Elderly care providers can help with mobility concerns, ensure that your senior’s home is clean and tidy, and help her to eat and to rest so she can keep up her strength.