Vibration stimuli to planta pedis is effective to fall prevention

摘要

Considering the aging population, the preven-tion of falls will become increasingly importance. One of the causes of an elderly people fall is the increase of the center of gravity deflection. Therefore we thought about stimuli to vibration receptor. The purpose of this study is to suppress the center of gravity deflection by giving planta pedis stimuli by single frequency vibration. We made a simple vibration stimulator which can give 225Hz vibration stimuli to planta pedis on three points. This frequency was decided by our prior study. The vibration stimuli points are heel, the root of big toe and the root of a little toe. The in-tensity of stimuli is set to 90% of the smallest stimuli inten-sity that the subject can feel it. We evaluated the effect of vibration stimuli by time duration of one-leg standing with closed eyes and the locus of the center of gravity deflection. The results showed that the time duration extended and the trajectory of the center of gravity deflection decreased even in only one point stimulation. Most effective point was the root of big toe. Our result is that the vibration stimuli to planta pedis are useful for fall prevention of elderly people.