Peter Attia explains why older adults fall where younger people catch themselves. As we age, we lose the strength and reaction speed to recover from stumbles. A hip fracture can mean a 25% chance of death within six months and a 40-50% chance of never returning to normal function.
Yeah, Peter Attia said it the other day. He said, you know, every day as a 20 year old or a 30 year old, you know, you encounter little disruptions where you trip or you, something happens and then you catch yourself. You know, there's a certain amount of you're not paying attention, you stub your toe, you trip or something happens. But you have enough strength and enough force to be able to generate immediately and enough balance to catch yourself. So throughout your 20s and 30s and 40s or whatever, you're able to overcome these little otherwise life threatening mishaps that are all around us every day. Because your feet are strong enough, you have balance enough to withstand that. And if you do fall, you know, you catch yourself and you, you don't break a wrist, you catch yourself or maybe you roll or whatever when you're younger. As you get older, if you lose this ability to even recover from a trip, in other words, you don't have enough force production to be able to swing that right foot forward and stop yourself from tripping or falling. Now you just fall and you fall partly because of the lack of strength, partly because the lack of ability to react quickly, partly because of a loss of balance. And then you fall and you stick a wrist out. Now you break your wrist or God forbid you break a hip because you have osteopenia or you have osteoporosis. And that hip, which otherwise would have been perfectly fine as a 20 year old or a 30 year old or a 40 year old, now it's broken. And then, you know, now you're 65 or 70 and now you wind up the hospital and now you have a 25% chance of never being the same again. Well, I think it's a 25% chance of dying within six months and a 40 or 50% chance of never being the same again.
