Healthy-Steps, Moving You to Better Health with the Lebed Method, a therapeutic exercise and movement program with wonderful music designed to help you thrive! Offering wellness programs for everyone and offering seniors a better quality of life both physically and emotionally while improving overall wellness, range-of-motion, balance, strength and endurance. Our program focuses on memory, prevention of falls, decreasing depression, improving quality of life at the same time as bringing back fun and enjoyment through exercising.
Each year, hospitals see thousands of older patients for broken hips due to falling. Balance exercises can help you avoid injuries from falls and keep your seniors independent and mobile. Healthy-Steps new Study published in the Administrative Nursing Journal showed that our program helped prevent seniors falling improves balance and gait!
The National Institute on Aging believes that, "when older people lose their ability to do things on their own, it doesn't happen just because they have aged. More likely it is because they have become inactive."
Each week, more than 30,000 Americans over the age of 65 are seriously injured by falling, and nearly 250 die from their injuries, according to the NSC. (National Council of Safety) Of those who do survive falling, 20-30 percent experience debilitating injuries that affect them the rest of their lives. Falling is also the leading cause of injury, and the leading cause of injury-related death, for both men and women 75 and older.
Patricia A. Miller is an occupational therapist and occupational therapy professor at Columbia University. She has found that when the elderly fear falling down, they often restrict their own mobility. The less physical activity they get, the worse their condition gets.
Beyond the risk of falling, a lack of physical activity can also lead to instances of long-term depression. The medicines used to treat the symptoms of depression can further complicate issues, making falls more likely.
Gait disturbances are the underlying conditions that make walking difficult. They can be caused by a number of things including anxiety, visual impairments and defects, neurodegeneration of the brain’s motor cortex, taking medicines that cause dizziness, and consuming alcoholic beverages. Researchers have estimated that anxiety is a cause for as much as 85% of gait disturbances.
Alzheimer’s and exercise/ for your information only
There is no proven way to prevent Alzheimer's disease, but a new Seattle-area study provides some of the strongest evidence yet that regular exercise can protect the brain -- and even improve cognitive performance -- in older adults showing signs of mental decline.
The Seattle study, funded by the Alzheimer's Association and the Department of Veterans Affairs, is one of the first randomized clinical trials showing that exercise is a source of brain protection, said Dr. Jeffrey Kaye, director of the Layton Aging and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Oregon Health & Science University,
A report from the Alzheimer's Association predicts that 10 million baby boomers will develop Alzheimer's disease in the United States — that translates to one out of every eight. For us "baby boomers," this is frightening to say the least.
Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Alzheimer's Research Center at the Mayo Clinic, said on ABC: "Regular physical exercise is probably the best means we have of preventing Alzheimer's disease today, better than medications, better than intellectual activity, better than supplements and diet."
I have been researching the dance movements and the music I use with Dementia and Alzheimer’s as I see such wonderful improvement in the people at Cascade week after week and I wanted to know exactly why this was happening. They smile, laugh and seem to know the movements better and better each week.
‘For Dementia and Alzheimer’s patients Memory begins to fade as the patients slide toward that dark abyss, but the last thing that goes — the last bit of memory — is their ability to remember music. Music is effective for maintaining and improving active and social, emotional and cognitive results. A major study added to the growing evidence that stimulating one's mind in Alzheimer's disease and other dementia, such as physical exercise can keep the body fit. Dancing increases cognitive acuity at all ages. It is obvious that dancing is a physical activity and stimulates the brain and improves muscle coordination.’
