Do You Know Your Balance Score?

Did you know that 1 out of every 4 persons over the age of 65 is expected to experience a spontaneous fall?

It is one of the top 2 reasons that people seek us out.  It's also why EFW is always working on balance and strength during our training sessions.  Strength is important and it's no coincidence that lack of strength plays a part in balance.

But there are other factors that impact balance and over the next few posts, we are going to focus on the subject of balance, what things can impact your ability to balance or not be so great at it, risk factors of poor balance, and strategies to improve your balance, even if you don't think its a factor for you right now. 

So there is a very cool tool that we at EFW became an early adopter of, and that tool is called the Zibrio Balance Scale. 

ZIBRIO had its genesis in the US Space Program and uses machine learning to establish patterns of stability and instability via a one-minute standing test with eyes open. the research and development of Zibrio comes from Dr. Katherine Forth, PhD and Erez Lieberman PhD.

Dr. Forth completed postdoctoral work at NASA and Dr. Lieberman is an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine.

This tool measures your standing steadiness and assigns a Postural Stability (PS) score. It measures all of your micro adjustments within the body during a 1-minute scan and provides a risk score, the lower the PS score the higher the risk of falling. 

Have you ever tried to stand perfectly still for a full minute without moving?  It's not as easy as one thinks it to be. 

In case you didn’t know, you are constantly adjusting when you are vertical (standing still or moving). The ability of the body too quickly and minimally complete these adjustments is a sign of steadiness and that means lower fall risk. 

What we are ultimately looking for is to maintain or improve our individual PS score.

Since this score is all about risk measurements and has been used to predict falls up to one year in advance.

We, at EFW, truly believe that the sooner you take an action to improve the greater the impact will be on your overall wellness. 

Are you ready to test your postural score?  

Simply email us at [email protected] with "TEST my PS" in the subject line of your email or call us at 281-656-8107 and we will get in contact with you ASAP to set up a time for you to come by and use the Zibrio Scale.