Elderly turning to yoga to avoid falls
SYDNEY: Once a week Prof Roberta Shepherd takes a yoga class and then goes for coffee with her likeminded classmates.
A leading pioneer in physiotherapy, Prof Shepherd — who was this month awarded a Queen’s honour (AO) for her service to education and academia — is in her 80s and has been doing yoga for the past 20 years.
Yoga may not be for everyone, but Prof Shepherd thinks it improves her balance and flexibility.
‘‘I think I might be worse off if I hadn’t been going to yoga classes for so long.’’
Yoga is demonstrated to improve balance and motor control and University of Sydney researchers Assoc Prof Anne Tiedemann, Principal Research Fellow, School of Public Health, and Prof Shepherd are investigating its potential to prevent falls in older adults — a growing issue for an ageing population.
Falling in older age can result in serious injury such as a hip fracture. It is estimated almost one in three adults aged 60 and over will die within a year of suffering a broken hip.
A study of 235 Australians 60 and older, recently published in the journal Public Health Research & Practice, investigated yoga as a potential fall prevention programme.
It showed yoga was just as popular as two existing falls prevention programmes — t’ai chi and the Otago Exercise Programme (OEP). Of the three exercise programmes, 82 people (35%) nominated yoga as their preference, 75 (32%) nominated the OEP and 78 (33%) nominated t’ai chi.
Anything that makes older people more resilient and less likely to fall was welcome and should be considered an essential health intervention, study lead author Assoc Prof Tiedemann said.
Prof Shepherd said there were scientific reasons why yoga had a positive effect on motor control and balance, but it might depend on the type of yoga class people took and the level of balance challenge involved.
‘‘If you are lying down or sitting for much of the time, it won’t improve your balance. You have to improve your balance in order to minimise your risk of falling,’’ she said.
‘‘Anything that is done upright and with your feet on the floor and is challenging to do is likely to have an effect on balance.’’ —AAP