Muscle Weakness And Senior Balance Exercises

How Senior Balance Exercises Help Muscle Weakness

By Suzanne Stoke, Physical Therapist @ Exercise For Balance via www.exerciseforbalance.com

    For older adults, practicing strength exercises and senior balance exercises go hand in hand to enhance stability and improve mobility. Please see   http://www.exerciseforbalance.com/buy-now Medical researchers have been studying the connection between combining equilibrium routines and leg strengthening exercises to establish adequate stability for activities of daily living. Healthcare professionals have determined that as we age our muscle strength as well as balance abilities decline with each decade. For example, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have pinpointed why normal aging is accompanied by a diminished ability to regain strength and mobility after muscle injury: Over time, stem cells within muscle tissues dedicated to repairing damage become less able to generate new muscle fibers and struggle to self-renew. “In the past, it’s been thought that muscle stem cells themselves don’t change with age, and that any loss of function is primarily due to external factors in the cells’ environment,” reported Helen Blau, PhD, the Donald and Delia B. Baxter Foundation Professor. Blau and her colleagues also identified for the first time a process by which the older muscle stem cell populations can be rejuvenated to function like younger cells. “Our findings identify a defect inherent to old muscle stem cells,” she said. “Most exciting is that we also discovered a way to overcome the defect. As a result, we have a new therapeutic target that could one day be used to help elderly human patients repair muscle damage.” The researchers found that, when transplanted back into the animal, the treated stem cells migrate to their natural niches and provide a long-lasting stem cell reserve to contribute to repeated demands for muscle repair. “In mice, we can take cells from an old animal, treat them for seven days — during which time their numbers expand dramatically, as much as 60-fold — and then return them to injured muscles in old animals to facilitate their repair,” Blau said. In 2010, Blau’s laboratory published a study in Science showing that muscle stem cells grown on soft hydrogel maintain their “stemness” in culture. In contrast, muscle stem cells grown on hard plastic tissue culture plates, the standard way to cultivate cells in the laboratory, quickly differentiate into more-specialized, but less therapeutically useful, muscle progenitor cells. The difference is likely due to the fact that soft hydrogel is more similar than rigid plastic to the muscle tissue environment in which the stem cells are naturally found. In the current study, the researchers found that targeting the p38 MAP kinase to induce the rapid expansion of the remaining functional stem cells from old mice required the soft hydrogel substrate. “The drug plus hydrogel boosts the small clones so that they undergo a burst of self-renewing divisions,” Gilbert said. Thus, rejuvenation of the population is contingent on the synergy between biophysical and biochemical cues. Finally, the researchers tested the ability of the rejuvenated old muscle stem cell population to repair muscle injury and restore strength in 2-year-old recipient mice. They teamed up with co-author Scott Delp, PhD, the James H. Clark Professor in the School of Engineering, who has designed a novel way to measure muscle strength in animals that had muscle injuries and then underwent the stem cell therapy. “We were able to show that transplantation of the old treated muscle stem cell population repaired the damage and restored strength to injured muscles of old mice,” Cosgrove said. “Two months after transplantation, these muscles exhibited forces equivalent to young, uninjured muscles. This was the most encouraging finding of all.” The researchers plan to continue their research to learn whether this technique could be used in humans. “If we could isolate the stem cells from an elderly person, expose them in culture to the proper conditions to rejuvenate them and transfer them back into a site of muscle injury, we may be able to use the person’s own cells to aid recovery from trauma or to prevent localized muscle atrophy and weakness due to broken bones,” Blau said. “This really opens a whole new avenue to enhance the repair of specific muscles in the elderly, especially after an injury. Our data pave the way for such a stem cell therapy.”

Senior Balance Exercises For Better Stability

    Medical Researchers are proponents of performing senior balance exercises every day. As we can see, medical researchers are aware of the widespread problem of diminished strength among older adults as they age. Those researchers are doing fantastic work to develop ways to repair muscle tissue and restore muscle strength, which is a vital component of being able to have good balance in order to limit the potential for a fall and injury. As the medical community advances their techniques of stem cell development, it is important to use the tools at hand to maximize strength and balance abilities in order to enhance steadiness. The best way to increase adequate stability is to perform equilibrium routines on a regular basis. Now you can practice specific stability strategies and senior balance exercises developed by an experienced Physical Therapist in the comfort of your own home with the Exercise For Balance DVD.

Senior Balance Exercises In The Exercise For Balance DVD

    To learn the best leg strengthening and balance exercises needed for stability, get the Exercise For Balance DVD. The comprehensive Balance DVD is the perfect instructional medium to use at home or in a group setting. The easy to follow  DVD is filled with the best balance and strength exercises needed to enhance senior fitness and to perform basic activities like walking, standing, stair climbing or to advance to high level activities like dancing and hiking. In the Exercise For Balance DVD, you will learn how to improve balance, balance techniques and balance routines from a balance trainer (licensed Physical Therapist) who has worked with balance and dizziness disorders for over 20 years. Get your copy of the Exercise For Balance DVD by clicking on the BUY NOW button

For the best leg strength and stability, start balance exercises today with the Exercise For Balance DVD to improve balance and prevent falls.
For more information see http://www.mayoclinic.com/health-information/