Osteoporosis: safety precautions

A safe home for an elderly personCopper news
Falls are often the cause of severe fractures in the elderly, as with age there is a risk of developing osteoporosis – a disease in which bones lose strength.

Osteoporosis is a disease of the skeleton, in which there is a decrease in the mass of bone tissue and a violation of the structure of bones. As a result, bones lose strength, become brittle and can easily break. Experts call osteoporosis a silent epidemic – the course of the disease has a hidden form and unclear symptoms, while its consequences – fractures – annually cause huge socio-economic damage to the state. According to the Federal Center for the Prevention of Osteoporosis, among the urban population, 24% of women and 13% of men aged 50 years and older have already had fractures.

One of the main external factors provoking falls at home is the improper arrangement of the house. To reduce the likelihood of falls, elderly people need to properly organize their home space.

In the near future, specialists of the Russian Association for Osteoporosis are going to publish recommendations for the prevention of fractures, including rules for home improvement developed by the National Institute of Health and the National Institute for the Study of Aging in the USA.

According to the World Health Organization, osteoporosis ranks fourth among all non-communicable pathologies (after diseases of the cardiovascular system, oncological diseases and diabetes mellitus), which are the cause of mortality and disability of the population.

According to the Russian Association for Osteoporosis, every minute in Russia there are 7 vertebral fractures caused by this disease, every 5 minutes there is a fracture of the femoral neck. According to statistics, 34 million people in the Russian Federation are at risk of osteoporotic fractures. At the same time, the mortality rate for hip fracture in some regions of our country reaches 52%.

"There are many known risk factors for fractures, and falls play an important role among them. And measures to prevent falls may be no less important than taking medications to treat osteoporosis directly. Moreover, the prevention of falls in some cases, for example at home, is quite simple and does not require any special financial costs," says Irina Skripnikova, MD, Head of the Department of Osteoporosis Prevention at the Federal State Medical University of Preventive Medicine, member of the Presidium of the Russian Association for Osteoporosis.

For example, an important role in preventing falls is played by the competent arrangement of home space. American specialists have developed the following recommendations for patients:

• Free the rooms, and especially the floor, from unnecessary things, junk. It is better if the house is equipped with easily moving objects.
• Remove the cords, wires from under your feet, especially on the aisles.
• Use plastic non-slip coverings or carpets (instead of tiles or slippery parquet).
• Do not go home in socks or barefoot.
• Choose shoes with non-slip soles.
• Make sure that your home is well lit.
• Poorly fixed carpets on the floor are a risk factor. Remove them from the aisle, attach them to the floor or put special non-slip bedding under them.
• Use rubber bath mats.
• Do not keep small animals at home that can hit you on the legs, causing a fall.
• The night light should be located in the immediate vicinity of the bed, so that if necessary, you can get up at night, you can easily turn it on.
• The bed should be so high that when you sit on its edge, your feet touch the floor.
• All the necessary things should be at your fingertips. Do not stand on chairs or ladders to get the desired item.
• Use a radiotelephone to make it easier for you to answer calls. Then you don't have to rush to the phone every time a call rings.
• Ask your doctor to replace drugs that cause drowsiness, impaired coordination of movements, and a decrease in the reaction rate to safer analogues.
• If you have vision problems, be sure to use correction tools. This will help you reduce the risk of falls.
• "All of these recommendations should be followed by people who are at risk. These include patients who have fallen more than once in the last year or had serious injuries as a result of a fall, as well as people who cannot perform the simplest functional tests. For example, this: get up five times and sit on a chair without help as quickly as possible. If the exercise is performed for more than 10 seconds, the risk of falls is high. Or, for example, take eight steps in a straight line, putting your feet one to the other "in single file". If the balance is lost, the risk of falls is high. Inability to stand on one leg for 10 seconds increases the risk of fracture by 9.11 times," says Lyudmila Rozhinskaya, MD, Professor, Head of the Department of Neuroendocrinology and Osteopathies of the Federal State University "Endocrinological Research Center".

Experts say that the inability to keep balance is the main cause of falls. Therefore, it is advisable to perform exercises to train balance and strengthen the leg muscles. With age, muscle mass decreases by 15-20%, especially due to the so-called "fast" muscle fibers, which leads to a decrease in reaction speed and disruption of normal coordination of movements. As a result, there is a significant decrease in the ability to balance. And if a young person under the threat of falling, as a rule, manages to reflexively quickly align the position of the body and stay on his feet, then an elderly person most often falls without even having time to secure himself with his hands.

Especially dangerous is the tendency of elderly people to fall sideways, the result of which is an extremely dramatic and disabling fracture of the femoral neck. Experts also note that innovative drugs have now appeared on the market that not only prevent bone loss, but also normalize muscle function, which helps reduce the risk of falls. Such drugs can be shown to people who, for various reasons, cannot conduct independent training.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru18.04.2011