Start With One Number This Week

Here is the honest truth about your body. It will not mail you a yearly notice telling you where you stand and what to shore up. You have to ask for it. And the genuinely good news is that asking takes about five minutes this week, and it costs nothing.

Falls prevention is not one big fix. It is a maintenance system we should run on a schedule.

Step One, Get Your Number

Before you change a single thing, get a baseline. NCOA's Falls Free CheckUp is 13 short questions about your history, your balance, your medications, and how steady you actually feel. It gives you a personalized risk score and next steps at the end. That is your starting point.

Begin there, today, at https://www.ncoa.org/tools/falls-free-checkup/

Why start with the number? Because we cannot manage what we have not measured, and because the questions themselves will surface risks we might have stopped noticing.

The Six Steps, Ordered by Leverage

NCOA gives six steps. I want to give them to you in the order I would actually run them, highest-leverage first, because a flat list makes everything look equally urgent and it is not.

1. Build strength and balance. This is the one lever that adds to the account instead of just protecting it. Find a balance and exercise program through your local Area Agency on Aging, a senior center, or a YMCA. Find one you like and take a friend, because the one you attend beats the perfect one you skip.

2. Review your medications. Sit down with your doctor or pharmacist and go through everything, prescription and over-the-counter. You are checking for side effects that affect balance or blood pressure. Take medications only as prescribed, and never adjust them on your own.

3. Check vision and hearing every year. A dilated eye exam once a year catches the changes that steal depth perception. A hearing test protects the balance system most people do not know they are losing. Update your glasses. If you wear bifocals, tuck your chin to look through the distance portion on stairs and curbs.

4. Make your home safe. This is the highest-return afternoon you will spend. Clear tripping hazards, throw rugs, cords, and clutter. Add bright, non-glare bulbs and nightlights in the bedroom, bathroom, and hallway. Put a chair in the bedroom for dressing. Add a grab bar

   and a shower seat. Keep daily items between waist and shoulder height so you are not reaching or climbing.

5. Talk to your family. Falls don't belong to an age group. Bring the people who know your routines, notice changes, and see things you may not into the plan. Keep the conversation going.

6. Keep the baseline current. Re-run the CheckUp and the eye and hearing exams yearly.

Drift is normal. Catching it early is the whole game.

Routines can check the system.

Matt and I have had a version of the same morning ritual for years. Two chairs, coffee, and, especially when the children were still at home, a few quiet minutes before the day got loud. We would work through the day ahead, what each of us had coming up, and the occasional, “Have you considered…?” It wasn't a meeting. It was simply a rhythm we built into an ordinary morning.

We never called it a system. It was just something we did regularly enough that important things had a place to surface.

I think about fall prevention the same way. The things that keep us steady are easier to protect when we don't wait for a problem to remind us to check them.

The One Thing, If You Only Do One Thing

If the list feels like a lot, do not do the list today. Do one thing. Take the check up this week and let your score tell you which step to run first.

I want you to hold on to something worth remembering on the hard days.

A single day is a data point. What matters is the pattern.

You are not going to fall-proof your life this afternoon, and you do not have to. You should find your number, read it, and make one move. Then another tomorrow, next week, and next month.

Make Movement Part of the Day

There is something I really like about the Blue Zones approach to movement: much of it doesn't look like exercise.

People walk. They garden. They take the stairs. They carry things. They get up and down. Movement is woven into the architecture of the day rather than saved for the hour we call a workout.

There is good sense in that. But when we are specifically talking about protecting ourselves from falls, I would add something to it.

We need to practice the movements we want our bodies to keep being able to make.

Current exercise recommendations include aerobic activity, strength training and balance work. So yes, walk. Garden. Carry the groceries. Take the stairs when you can. But also give your balance and strength a little deliberate attention.

Here is a simple place to start:

● Walk. Take a brisk 10- to 20-minute walk. Outside is wonderful, but the hallway, treadmill or grocery store counts too.

● Get out of a chair. Sit down and stand back up 8 to 12 times. If you can do it safely without using your hands, even better. That ordinary movement asks quite a lot of your legs.

● Step up. Using a stair or low step, step up and back down 8 to 10 times on each leg. Keep a railing or sturdy support nearby.

● Rise onto your toes. Holding a counter or sturdy chair if needed, slowly rise onto your toes and lower back down. Try 10 to 15 repetitions.

● Carry something. Groceries count. So do dumbbells. Choose a manageable load and walk with it for 30 to 60 seconds. Carrying asks your legs, core, grip, and posture to work together.

● Challenge your balance. Stand with one foot directly in front of the other, or on one leg if that is appropriate for you, with a counter or other sturdy support within reach. Try 20 to 30 seconds on each side.

Then keep looking for the little repetitions hiding inside your regular day.

Get the mail. Carry the laundry. Take the stairs. Stand up from the chair. Walk while you are talking on the phone. Put something away yourself instead of asking someone else to get it.

None of those things feels particularly impressive.

That may be precisely the point.

The body doesn't know whether you called it exercise. It knows what you asked it to do.

And if we want our bodies to keep catching us when we lose our footing, we need to keep giving them opportunities to practice strength, balance and movement before the moment we need them.

Why Any of This Is Worth an Afternoon

Because the scale of this is not small, and because it is not fixed. Among adults 65 and older, a fall leads to an emergency room visit every 11 seconds. More than 95% of hip fractures are caused by falls.

And yet the entire premise of Falls Prevention Awareness Week, the reason the message reaches more than 17 million people each year, is three words long.

Falls are preventable.

So, get your number this week. Read it. Make one move. That is how we broker age into strategic advantage.

Take the check up: https://www.ncoa.org/tools/falls-free-checkup/

SOURCES

National Council on Aging. Falls Free CheckUp (13-question falls risk self-assessment tool). ncoa.org/tools/falls-freecheckup

National Council on Aging. "6 Steps to Help Prevent Falls in Older Adults." Falls Free Initiative, 2024. ncoa.org/FallsPrevention

National Council on Aging. "Avoid Falls at Home: 5 Easy Ways to Make Your Home Safer" and "5 Ways Taking Care of Your Vision and Hearing Help Lower Falls Risk." Falls Prevention Awareness Week handouts, 2023.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hip fracture and falls data, cited via NCOA Falls Free CheckUp.

National Council on Aging. "Falls Prevention Awareness Week 2025 Impact Report."