A big part of balance is muscle coordination and strength. Vision and your inner ear play an important role, too. Both vision and to a greater degree muscle tone/strength naturally diminish as we age.
The muscles of our feet, legs, hips, and trunk all work together to keep our bodies upright and balanced. When those get weaker, it’s harder for those muscles to work together to stay in position when our balance is interrupted—whether by leaning, climbing stairs, twisting, or stumbling.
This is why it is important to try to get strong when you are young and stay active when you get older: you can combat the natural weakening of aging and prevent injuries in old age.
Yeah I mean if you start tipping in one direction, you need muscle strength to stop the motion in that direction, right yourself in the opposite direction, and then still yourself. As you get older and you lose muscle strength, your muscles are less able to effectively perform this task. I don’t think its really a sense of balance that people lose, for the most part, its the ability for the body to correct when things go askew. i.e. your brain knows what to do, but the body fails it.
Balance, absent injury or illness, is not usually the cause of instability while moving.
Inactivity, weakness in the accessory muscle which we use to unconsciously stabilize ourselves.
Changes in posture can increase instability by moving your center of gravity from about the navel to several inches in front of the navel.
Balance tends to be maintained by the vestibular system (a set of canals in your inner ear). All you senses tends to get worse as you get older. Hearing, smell, taste, vision (not just clarity but you see less vibrant colors as you get older) all get worse w/ age and your vestibular system is no different.
Loss of muscle strength is part of it. But there is also a neurosensory dimension: proprioception and vestibular sense become gradually less functional, leading to larger excursions from equilibrium before the brain perceives them and commands a correction.
For some people, tiny calcium carbonate crystals form in the fluid of their inner ear. These are rarely permanent and typically dissolve back into the fluid eventually, sometimes after days sometimes weeks sometimes months or longer. They can cause periods of intense vertigo, or for other people just a general sort of uneasy dizziness. For some elderly folks it’s just part of their daily life.
In addition to what other folks here have said about coordination and strength, there is loss of nerve sensation. The general rule is 1% of a human’s peripheral nerves die each year they’re alive over the age of 30. So come up by the age of 80 they’ve lost 50% of the feeling. That feeling is especially crucial on The soles of our feet, which provide information crucial to walking with balance.
As someone in my 60s, I do appreciate the fact I can smack my arm or leg on something and barely flinch. But I think that has more to do with some sort of attenuation of the pain response in my brain than with loss of innervation, judging by the response that my wife has to similar injuries. But I’m confident that reduced innervation is definitely playing a role.
Please excuse or ignore any egregious spelling errors caused by voice to text.
Comments
It’s muscle strength and coordination that tend to decline—the ability to balance, not the sense of balance.
A big part of balance is muscle coordination and strength. Vision and your inner ear play an important role, too. Both vision and to a greater degree muscle tone/strength naturally diminish as we age.
The muscles of our feet, legs, hips, and trunk all work together to keep our bodies upright and balanced. When those get weaker, it’s harder for those muscles to work together to stay in position when our balance is interrupted—whether by leaning, climbing stairs, twisting, or stumbling.
This is why it is important to try to get strong when you are young and stay active when you get older: you can combat the natural weakening of aging and prevent injuries in old age.
Does the sense of balance get worse with age?
Or is it that the muscles responsible for keeping us upright and correcting when off-balance tend to be weaker in older people?
Yeah I mean if you start tipping in one direction, you need muscle strength to stop the motion in that direction, right yourself in the opposite direction, and then still yourself. As you get older and you lose muscle strength, your muscles are less able to effectively perform this task. I don’t think its really a sense of balance that people lose, for the most part, its the ability for the body to correct when things go askew. i.e. your brain knows what to do, but the body fails it.
Balance, absent injury or illness, is not usually the cause of instability while moving.
Inactivity, weakness in the accessory muscle which we use to unconsciously stabilize ourselves.
Changes in posture can increase instability by moving your center of gravity from about the navel to several inches in front of the navel.
The last happens when people stoop forward.
Old people muscles get weak + slower reaction time = loss of balance. Stay active, folks, and keep your minds sharp while you are young/middle age.
Balance tends to be maintained by the vestibular system (a set of canals in your inner ear). All you senses tends to get worse as you get older. Hearing, smell, taste, vision (not just clarity but you see less vibrant colors as you get older) all get worse w/ age and your vestibular system is no different.
Loss of muscle strength is part of it. But there is also a neurosensory dimension: proprioception and vestibular sense become gradually less functional, leading to larger excursions from equilibrium before the brain perceives them and commands a correction.
For some people, tiny calcium carbonate crystals form in the fluid of their inner ear. These are rarely permanent and typically dissolve back into the fluid eventually, sometimes after days sometimes weeks sometimes months or longer. They can cause periods of intense vertigo, or for other people just a general sort of uneasy dizziness. For some elderly folks it’s just part of their daily life.
In addition to what other folks here have said about coordination and strength, there is loss of nerve sensation. The general rule is 1% of a human’s peripheral nerves die each year they’re alive over the age of 30. So come up by the age of 80 they’ve lost 50% of the feeling. That feeling is especially crucial on The soles of our feet, which provide information crucial to walking with balance.
As someone in my 60s, I do appreciate the fact I can smack my arm or leg on something and barely flinch. But I think that has more to do with some sort of attenuation of the pain response in my brain than with loss of innervation, judging by the response that my wife has to similar injuries. But I’m confident that reduced innervation is definitely playing a role.
Please excuse or ignore any egregious spelling errors caused by voice to text.