Older people who have a positive attitude towards aging will recover better if they have a fall, suggests a new study.
Falling in older adults is a ‘great concern about public health’, because they can lead to disability and hospitalization, which influences people to live independently, researchers said.
The consequences of falls cost the NHS estimated £ 5 million a day, but the experts noted that not every victim experienced physical decline while they were looking for research whether the impact of a fall could be limited by ‘mindsets around aging’.
The teams of Imperial College London and Coventry University investigated information about 694 people aged 60 to 90 in England who had not fallen in the two years before the study.
In addition to studying data on falls, experts also investigated survey answers that measure thoughts and beliefs about aging.
Researchers assessed their hiking well, regardless of whether they were active and whether they needed help with daily activities such as dressing, bathing or getting out of bed after they had a fall.
Those who initially had shown more ‘positive’ outdated thoughts – such as believing that aging did not stop them from doing what they wanted to do – seemed to have a better recovery after having a fall, the academics thought.
“We discovered that older people who had more positive self -perceptions about aging at the start were better protected against negative physical consequences after a fall,” they wrote in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Older people who have a positive attitude towards aging will recover better if they have a fall, suggests a new study
People who had the highest possible score on the ‘self-perceptions of aging’ measurements or the most positive mindset about aging-hadden 162 percent lower opportunities to show slow running speed, 200 percent lower opportunities to be dependent on others to perform daily living activities and were 123 percent less likely to be a fall, not after falling, not a fall, not after falling.
About one in three people aged 65 and older have a fall at least once a year, increase to one in two people aged 80 and older, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice).
There are more than 210,000 Falls-related emergency recordings in people in people aged 65 and older and every year, with two in three of people aged 80 and older.
Previous studies show that falls are the main cause of injury, injury -related disability and death in the elderly, with about half of the falls resulting in large cuts, traumatic brain injury or fractures.
Dr. Toby Ellmers, who led the last investigation at Imperial College London, said: “Those who expressed more positive feelings about their own aging seemed to be protected against poorer physical consequences after a fall.
‘There was a considerable difference in the speed of physical recovery among the people we have studied, and this seemed linked to their initial beliefs about aging.
‘Our results suggest that changing the way in which some older people view their aging process can play a key role in improving recovery and well -being.
‘It is even possible that simple’ tweaks’ to help people to develop a more positive mindset about aging, such as having discussions with a friend or family member about the positives related to aging, can help.
The consequences of falling cost the NHS estimated £ 5 million a day
“This is something that we really want to explore in future research.”
Colleague Co-Lead Dr. Mathew Hill, from Coventry University, added: “Although we knew from earlier research that negative thoughts and beliefs about aging are associated with an increased risk of negative health results, such as stroke and mortality, this is the first study specifically associated with physical recovery after a fall.”
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