In an article about aging in this week’s New Yorker, Atul Gawande writes:
The single most serious threat she faced was not the lung nodule or the back pain. It was falling. Each year, about three hundred and fifty thousand Americans fall and break a hip. Of those, forty per cent end up in a nursing home, and twenty per cent are never able to walk again. The three primary risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications, and muscle weakness. Elderly people without these risk factors have a twelve-per-cent chance of falling in a year. Those with all three risk factors have almost a hundred-per-cent chance.
Could the cause of so much falling be too little omega-3? My omega-3 research suggests that more omega-3 quickly improves balance and that current levels in most places are far below optimal.