High Blood Pressure May Cause Falls in Seniors

Research indicates that seniors with high blood pressure are more likely to fall than seniors with lower blood pressure.

Dr. Farzaneh Sorond of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Hebrew SeniorLife's Institute for Aging Research and Harvard Medical School in Boston, worked with a team of researchers monitoring 419 men and women over 65 and studying their brain blood flow.

"In the May 18 issue of Neurology, the authors report that those seniors who were among the 20 percent of participants who experienced the smallest brain blood flow changes were 70 percent more likely to fall than those among the 20 percent with the largest brain blood flow changes."

Seniors with high blood pressure are more prone to falling, an effect of the amount of brain blood flow.

This raises the suggestion that daily exercise and treatment for high blood pressure could help to keep seniors from falling.

Almost two million trips to emergency rooms are the result of falls every year. Falls cause over 16,00 deaths yearly.

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