After taking a painful tumble, this doctor and runner is learning the best way to fall

By Daphne Miller in the Washington Post

Thanks to Jim T for sending this in

One minute, I was trotting peacefully along a rutted hillside path. The next, I lay in a heap on my left side, so wracked with pain it was hard to breathe. A longtime runner, I traded pavement for trails a couple years ago, and since then I’ve taken a few tumbles. But never had I fallen so fast and so hard. Moaning, I inventoried what might be broken. Then panic set in as I considered some horrifying statistics: An estimated 1 in 3 women will break a hip, and, for patients older than 60, the one-year mortality rate after a hip fracture can be as high as 58 percent. Though still in my early 50s, I thought of hardy patients I’d cared for over the years who had swiftly declined after one bad fall.

I was lucky. I had no major fractures or head trauma, and my bones, on X-ray, seemed reasonably strong. But I hobbled around for weeks, my left side turning from purple to yellow, my arm in a sling. Once I was finally back on the trail, I could not shake the fear that my next fall (and there certainly would be one) could be far worse. This anxiety quickly extended to any sport involving a hard surface, including street jogging, cycling, skating, and skiing. I was suffering from a well-described “syndrome”: fear of falling or FOF, which is especially common in the over-50 crowd. Research shows that people with FOF, regardless of whether they have experienced a bad fall, are more likely to become deconditioned, depressed and socially isolated.

At this point, my options seemed clear: confine all sports to a squishy mat, or learn how to fall safely. But what is the best way to fall, and how do we master this?