Acute exercise effects on balance outcome measures in healthy older adults: Preliminary results

Approximately one third of Canadian seniors experience a fall each year and one quarter suffer serious injuries as a result. Preventative exercise programs are commonly recommended; however, the current methods used to assess the risk associated with these programs do not include the effects of exercise on fall risk. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of acute exercise on balance in elderly individuals. We hypothesized that acute exercise in healthy seniors would negatively affect balance outcome measures in those seniors who had a prior history of at least one fall in the past year. During the study participants were separated into two groups: those who had experienced a fall in the last year (fallers) and those who had not (non-fallers). All participants underwent static and dynamic tests to determine balance outcome measures under fatigued and control (non-fatigued) conditions. To represent the fatigued condition, the Naughton treadmill protocol was used to safely increase heart rate to 60-69% HRmax. Although it was expected that performance in the balance outcome measures would be adversely affected by the acute exercise bout in patients at a high risk of falling, conclusive results could not be drawn as the data collected were all from participants who had not experienced a fall within the past year. However, preliminary results are presented for data collected from six participants classified as non-fallers. Keywords: acute exercise; balance; fall risk; older adult