Older adults who had chronic musculoskeletal pain in two or more places, higher levels of severe pain and/or pain that interfered with their daily activities were more likely to fall than adults who didn’t have those types of pain, according to a study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Pain contributes to functional decline and muscle weakness and is associated with mobility limitations that could predispose to falls,” the authors wrote.
They say there could be several causes for the pain-falls relationship, including neuromuscular effects that could lead to leg muscle weakness or slowed responses to impending falls. The pain could cause people to change the way they walk, resulting in instability.
Chronic pain also could be a sufficient distraction to interfere with the thinking ability needed to prevent a fall, they say, noting that preventing or interrupting a fall usually needs a thought-out physical maneuver.
Those weaknesses could occur without people who care for the person who has pain realizing it accompanies the more obvious pain problem. The authors say chronic pain hasn’t gotten sufficient attention as a risk factor for falls in older adults.