Your Cincinnati Chiropractor Can Help You To Avoid Work Injuries Due To Falls
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010At my Cincinnati Chiropractic Clinic I treat a lot of elders who suffer from balance problems. In fact, dizziness, “wooziness,” and other balance-related challenges affect at least nine percent of adults, aged 65 and over. Good balance is crucial, of course, in helping seniors to stay independent and to avoid falling down and sustaining injuries that are commonly extremely serious or even fatal. But, it may surprise you to know that falls are the cause of a large percentage of work-related injuries for individuals younger than 65 years of age, including workers in their twenties and thirties. That’s right! No one is exempt from to balance challenges, no matter how young they may be. That is why those who work in”precarious locations” like construction workers, roofers, oil platform employees, windows cleaners, or any other place where a ladder is required are in danger of serious injury if their balance is “off.”
The principal function of good balance is to help us to manage and maintain our body position, whether we are standing still or moving, and whether we are on the ground or high up on a platform. Good balance helps us to walk without faltering, arise from a sitting position without teetering, and to climb stairs without tripping. To sum it up, then, good balance is extremely important to our health and well-being.
What come as a surprise to you is that you could have a balance problem without being aware of how threatening it is. On occasion an individual is able to “shake off” a dizzy feeling and the sensation may not return for a while. The problem is that when sudden dizziness occurs at a decisive moment, it is too late to shake it off and a fall is often unpreventable.
Vertigo is the medical term for the sensation that you, or objects around you, are spinning. About 40% of individuals in the U.S. will have at least one experience of dizziness that is serious enough to seek out help from a health professional, such as your Chiropractor at Cincinnati Chiropractic. That said, if you are involved in any of the activities listed above, having a chiropractor check your balance before an episode of dizziness, make corrections if needed, and then aid you in maintaining good balance, may save you from serious injury or worse.
Balance disorders at any age are serious. If you feel as if you may have a possible balance disorder, it is essential for you to be diagnosed and treated without delay. Often guidelines are helpful. Therefore, if you can answer “yes” to any of the following questions, even if the experience is seldom or infrequent, it is highly recommended that you discuss the symptom(s) with a chiropractor as soon as possible:
• Have you experienced a feeling of being “unsteady?”
• Has the room seemed to spin around you?
• Has there ever a time when you felt as if you were moving when you knew you were standing still?
• Have you lost your balance and/or fallen down?
• Have you ever felt as if you were falling?
• Has your vision ever become “blurred?”
• Have you ever felt disoriented, or lost a sense of time, place or identity?
It is important for you to remember that balance problems are not isolated to a particular age group. Our falling down is an ever-present possibility from the time we learn to walk until we take our final step All the more reason to have your balance checked if you work in a job that makes your falling down a “critical” issue. Don’t wait until it’s too late! Call a Chiropractor today, and if you’re in the Cincinnati area, I’d love to be your Cincinnati Chiropractor!