HEALTH MATTERS
FALLS prevention week (September 23-29, 2019) coincides with the first week of autumn or ‘fall’ as it’s known in America.
As we get older, falls become more common, so much so that it’s the leading cause of injury and hospital admissions for older people.
Around one in three adults over 65 who live at home will have a least one fall a year and many people will have more frequent falls.
A fall can affect someone’s confidence, reducing their quality of life and limiting their independence.
The good news is that falls can be reduced by doing regular strength and balance exercises.
Getting regular sight and hearing checks are important, as is cutting back on alcohol and avoiding drugs that make you more unsteady or slow your reactions (after discussion with your doctor or care professional).
Reducing home fall hazards is also vital, checking for trailing wires, clutter and buying non-slip mats and rugs for example. A full list and home hazard test can be found on the NHS website - type ‘falls’ into the search box.
As well as the negative effect on quality of life, falls also cost the NHS £2.3 billion a year and many falls could have been prevented.
This is why we’re asking everyone to support this year’s falls prevention week by sharing messages on social media and with friends and family.
If you or someone you know has started to fall regularly, then it’s important to visit a GP and get checked out.
You can also find local groups helping people to prevent and recover from falls in the Cheshire East area by using the ‘Live Well’ website (www. cheshireeast.gov.uk/ livewell) which lists many health, social, community and wellbeing services in the area. LAST Friday, school students around the world took part in the Climate Strike. Many workers downed tools and joined them.
Calling for urgent global action to halt the wholesale emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that threaten to send the climate over an irreversible tipping point in eleven years time, young people like Swedish school student Greta Thunberg are showing far more real leadership than the United Nations, never mind your Trumps, Putins, Xi Jinpings, or (heaven help us) Johnsons.
Here in Macclesfield too, young people took the lead, as school students demonstrated and marched through town to demand climate action, with hundreds of adults also gathering in support.
What a contrast to our supposed political ‘leadership’!
Our MP, who never usually misses an opportunity to get his photo in the paper, was nowhere to be seen.
Cheshire East Council may be ‘under new management’, but it still seems to be ‘business as usual’.
It’s all very well for them to announce that the mayor’s Bentley will be replaced with a greener vehicle and covers are to be placed over swimming pools, but our local Labour leadership seems just as firmly wedded to the car-culture as the previous Tory regime.
Combatting climate change demands - among other things - massively reduced, not increased, car and air-travel.
Yet only this month, the council cabinet has asked the government for £22m towards the cost of building the Poynton Relief Road.
This is to be bulldozed through miles of Poynton and Adlington green belt, for the sake of increasing traffic into Macclesfield (100 years experience has shown that bypasses only ease traffic on other roads in the short term and actually increase traffic overall) as well as encouraging more air travel from Manchester Airport.
Some joined-up thinking is needed here, Cheshire East Council.