The Effect of Prolonged Walking on Standing and Walking Balance in Elderly Women

Abstract

PURPOSE: Whichever way you look at the figures, the cost of falls in the elderly is a huge, and growing, cost to the public health system. This population is often encouraged to be physically active to prevent falls. At present, however, the fatigue-related adaptations associated with a prolonged walk have received little research attention mainly because fatigue is deliberately controlled for in experimental designs. This project aims to examine the effect of a prolonged walk on standing and walking balance in elderly women. METHOD: Eleven healthy, relatively inactive women (mean age 65.5 ± SD 3.77years) had their standing and walking balance assessed before and after performing a 25 min treadmill walk. Pre- and post-tests of standing balance were performed in a dual stance (with and without foam), semi-tandem stance and under dual task conditions. Centre of pressure (COP) path length (SPL) and elliptical area (AoE) were measured via a force plate in all conditions with the centre of mass (COM) sway measured with a swaymeter while standing on foam. Walking balance was assessed via medial-lateral (ML) and anterior-posterior (AP) accelerations of the head, thorax and pelvis. RESULTS: After a 25min walk, standing balance was compromised as demonstrated by significant increases in normal stance SPL (p<0.01), AoE (p<0.05) and medial lateral standard deviation (p<0.001). Analysis of walking balance before and after the 25min walk also revealed increases in head RMS acceleration in both ML and AP directions, but only reached significance in the ML direction (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: This preliminary investigation suggests that the fatigue-related adaptations following a 25min have a deleterious effect on standing and walking balance. Therefore, care needs to be taken when instructing sedentary elderly individuals to commence a walking program as they are susceptible to fatigue because of their low levels of fitness which may place this already high risk population at even greater risk.