Massage therapy has been shown to lessen stress and improve balance in elderly clients. New, unrelated, research shows stressful life events also raise the risk of falls in older men—significantly.
A study of around 5,000 older men has shown that stressful life events such as death of a loved one, or serious financial problems, significantly raised the risk of falls in the year following the incident, according to an Oxford University press release.
In age-adjusted analyses, any stressful life event was associated with a 41-percent increase in risk of fall, and a nearly two-fold increase in risk for multiple falls in the following year.
The research is published online in the journal Age and Ageing.