“She fell and broke her hip, and was never the same after that.”
Bet you dollars to doughnuts you can fill in a name and face for that sentence above.
Falls are such a common problem as we age that they can seem inevitable. But now some researchers out of Australia say they know what’s contributing to many of those falls. And the solution to avoiding them is astonishingly simple.
Change your glasses.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, looked at 606 subjects who were at high risk for falls either because they were 80+, or they were 65+, with a history of falls. All of the volunteers used multifocal glasses at least three times a week when walking outside and didn’t use single lens distance glasses.
Slash your risk of falls up to 40 percent
About half of the group was given a pair of single-lens glasses to wear when they were outside, or in an unfamiliar setting.
Both groups were then monitored for 13 months. During that time total falls were decreased by 8 percent in the single-lens group. But even more exciting was that those seniors in the single-lens group who were active—going outdoors on a regular basis—saw their total falls plummet by 40 percent! And the tumbles they did take were far less harmful.
Multifocal glasses are great for activities like driving, reading or cooking. But they have optical defects that can cause you to feel off balance when walking or moving around in an unfamiliar place causing you to fall. So it’s better to switch to a single-lens pair for outdoor activities.
They say failure is not falling down, but refusing to get up. I say success is avoiding that fall in the first place. Talk with your eye doctor today about getting a pair of single focal lenses and slash your risk for falling.
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