You probably know someone who’s fallen and broken a hip. You may not know that it’s not just the elderly who fall, or break their hips. All seniors are at risk.
The risk doubles every five years after you turn 50. Nine out of 10 hip fractures happen to people over 60. And more than 25 percent of those people will develop complications and die within a year.1
No matter what your age or level of fitness, you can take a few simple steps – right away – to keep this from happening to you.
A new study tells a revealing story. Turns out, the signals to your muscles start to slow down as you get older, making it harder for your muscles to respond.
Researchers at the University of Delaware looked at how muscles respond when the cells that activate them, called neurons, send out electrical signals for the muscles to move.
They found that in the elderly, not only do muscles respond more slowly, but neurons actually fire less frequently. At first glance this seems to confirm the conventional wisdom that slowing down physically is an inevitable consequence of aging but there’s more…