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Transcript

Over 60? This Spine Problem Could Be Making You More Likely to Fall · Scoliosis with Dr. Chris Gubbels

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're over 60 and you've started feeling less steady on your feet, you don't want to wait until you actually fall before you take it seriously.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because for a lot of people, the warning is not the actual fall.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: You trip over something, you need to take two or three steps before you catch yourself.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: You turn too quickly and you grab the counter.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: You step off that curb and all of a sudden you feel like your body got ahead of your feet.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Dr.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Scubles, back and spine space specialist here at School Day Care Denver.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if those little saves are happening more frequently than they used to, then there's one change that I would want to rule out before a small mistake becomes the fall that you can't recover from.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes the problem isn't that you're losing your balance more often.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's that you're losing your ability to actually get it back.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You see, these near falls may be the warning sign.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the last time you tripped when you were younger.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you caught your toe on a sidewalk, your body pitched forward, but you were able to catch yourself easily without a lot of effort, and you probably didn't really think much about it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably graceful, but you stayed up and you kept on walking.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: You see, that instant, rapid, easy recover is something we take for granted as we age over time.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because staying on your feet doesn't necessarily mean that your body never gets knocked off balance.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You get bumped, you step on uneven ground, you turn your head while you're walking, and you run into something, your foot catch something on the ground that you never saw.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: You see, your body is constantly making little corrections to keep yourself upright.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the time you have enough room to make those changes.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: But what concerns me is when that room starts to actually get smaller, meaning you don't actually have the ability to catch yourself on time.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're catching yourself more often.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you take an extra step or two.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your hand automatically reaches for the wall whenever you turn.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you haven't fallen yet, but maybe you're getting closer to the point where your body can't save you all the time.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So what changes?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine two people stumble forward at the exact same amount.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: One person starts fairly upright and their body is centered over their feet and their pelvis.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Their body moves forward, they get their feet underneath themselves, and they recover relatively easily.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now imagine the second person starts where their body is already pitching or leaning forward.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Before anything happens, they're already closer to the position the first person reached as they stumbled.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So they're already out of position.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: You give that person that's out of position that exact same trip, and they have less room to actually recover.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the idea I want you to understand.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your body needs that margin of air.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if changes in your spine gradually move your upper body forward or you start to shift to the side, you may be starting with some of that margin gone before you ever begin to trip.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: You may start using up that margin before the trip ever even happens.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can still walk, you can still stand, you may even feel pretty capable.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: But when something unexpected happens, you have less room to save yourself.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have that same margin anymore.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think one of the most important signs can show up before anyone would ever describe you as having a balance problem.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because you start catching yourself differently.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm less interested in whether you occasionally stumble.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody does that.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I care about what happens immediately after you stumble.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: A few years ago, did one quick step catch you?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now it takes two or three?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do you find yourself grabbing the counter or rallying every time you turn or you go up the stairs?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: When your toe catches something, do you feel like your upper body keeps going and your feet have to scramble underneath you to keep yourself upright?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those are very different from simply saying that I'm a little bit clumsy.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: It tells you something about how much recovery you have available once your body starts to move out of position.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you've noticed that you're catching yourself more often, or you're starting to lean forward, or you feel like your body is harder to control than it used to be, that's the exact kind of problem we evaluate at Scholar Care Denver.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: We look at whether scoliosis or alignment issues in the spine could be affecting your body's position and what options you have to actually improve it without relying on surgery.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: To learn more about what you have going on and what can possibly be done for it, book a free discovery call with our team.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: That'll give you a chance to talk to me one-on-one about your specific condition, what's happening with your spine, and what can be done to correct it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if your ability to recover is changing, I want you to know where your body is starting from before the stumble ever happens.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where spinal balance comes in.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: As people get older, the discs and joints can start to wear out unevenly.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some people will actually develop adult degenerative scoliosis.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Others begin to lean further forward as the shape and alignment of the spine changes over time.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: You see, your body adapts because it has to.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Your pelvis can shift or bend backwards, your knees can bend, your hips and muscles will start making adjustments just to keep your weight over your feet and to keep yourself upright.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Your body is remarkably good at adaptation to keep you functioning at its highest level possible.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is those compensations can actually leave you with less room when something suddenly pushes you further in the direction that you're already going or you're already leaning.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: You see, if you're already leaning forward, that forward symbol can be even harder to stop.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if your trunk is already like shifted over the side, an unexpected step in that direction can put you further outside the area where your feet can actually stay under you and control yourself.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: You see, you're not necessarily failing because your body forgot how to bounce.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's that you may be starting each recovery already in a worse position, which makes it more difficult and more challenging to recover.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, the fear is breaking a hip or getting a serious injury from a fall.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: But there's another part that can stop before that major fall.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that you stop trusting yourself.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: You start hesitating going upstairs.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: You stop walking across the yard when the ground is uneven.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: You start holding on to the railing when you never really intend to use it.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And before you know it, you're moving differently because you're afraid of what might happen if you make one wrong step.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that becomes its own problem and starts to rob you of your quality of life.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because when people stop challenging their body, they lose strength, they lose reaction time, they lose endurance, and they lose confidence.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: The exact things you need when something unexpected happens.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to wait for somebody to fall and hit the ground before we start asking why they have less room from air than they used to.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the best time to start thinking about that next fall maybe while you're still able to catch yourself.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this gets missed all the time.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you tell your doctor you're feeling less steady, there's a lot of reasonable things that they may look at first.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: They may look at your medications, your vision, your blood pressure to see if you have peripheral neuropathy, inner ear problems, neurological issues, leg length discrepancies, all kinds of things can be related to balance.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those can absolutely contribute to falls.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if all of those things have been checked and you're still feeling less steady, that is when I'd want to second look at the spine itself.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Has the position of your spine changed enough that you're starting every stumble with less room for recovery and less room for air?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that usually takes a different kind of look at the problem.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: You see, I'm not just interested if you can stand up right for an exam or walk 10 feet down the hallway.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see where your head and your upper body naturally sits over your pelvis and your feet.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're drifting forward or shifting to the side, whether scoliosis or degeneration has actually changed the overall alignment of your body and spine.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can have decent strain normally walking for short distances and still have very little margin once something unexpected happens.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if nobody's looked at the whole spine that way, that piece may never have been properly evaluated.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if this sounds like you, here's what I'd do next.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're catching yourself more than you used to, especially if you've also noticed that you're leaning forward or you're shifting over to the side, I wouldn't wait until that first series fall to investigate it.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've already talked to your doctor, done balance work, been told everything looks pretty normal, and you still don't trust your body the way you used to, I'd get a second look at your entire spine.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: At School at Care Denver, that's exactly what we do.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: We evaluate your entire spine and how your body is balanced over your pelvis and your feet.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we see whether or not things like scoliosis or degeneration or any other changes of spine alignment may be taking away some of your ability to recover when you do have that stumble.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because the goal isn't to wait until you have that fall and then treat whatever injury you have.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is to find out why it's getting harder to save yourself before the fall ever happens.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe that fall doesn't have to happen.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Look, if this sounds like you and you're looking for help, book a free discovery call.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: That'll give you a chance to talk to me one-on-one about what's going on with you and what can be done to help it.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is click on the link below in the description and my team will reach out to you to set up a time to talk.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're still not sure whether your balance has actually changed, watch my 10 second balance test in our next video.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: You see, the way you perform that test can tell you a lot more than simply whether or not you can actually stand on one foot for 10 seconds.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you there.