Improve Your Balance
Keeping your balance is very important in your life, especially your postural balance and equilibrium. Everyone should do balance exercises almost daily to avoid falls. Falls are a leading cause of disability, injury and death for seniors. Also, obese individuals have more trouble maintaining their postural balance. Some say our bodies are like an inverted pendulum with the top of the pendulum being the ankles and the bottom being the trunk. In the Simple Diet, unfortunately, I did not recommend balance exercises. Since I started going to the YMCA 4-6 times a week, I see that less than 5% of people there regularly do balance training.
My wife and I are seniors and we have balance challenges. I don’t want to mention her age but we celebrated our 55th Anniversary this week. I have developed a worksheet and we plan to do balance exercises almost daily. Over the past 9 months I have become strongly convinced that regular balance exercises are very important health-promoting activities for everyone. These can be done without equipment and while in the kitchen, while waiting in line, etc.
Dr. Anderson’s New Guide to Total Fitness includes these recommendations: do home balance exercises for about 10 minutes for 6 days per week. I recently gave specific directions (BALANCE YOU FITNESS PROGRAM) on nutdoc.wordpress.com. Add this row of information to the Table on page 49 of The Simple Diet:
| Balance | Do standing and walking exercises | 10 Balance Exercises, 6 days per week | 60 minutes (300 calories) |
Remember, maintaining your balance is very important—especially for seniors. Best, Nutdoc
