What your walking gait can reveal about your health

Walking depends on an enormous number of messages passing between the brain and the muscles of the arms, chest, back, abdomen, pelvis and legs.

What appears to be a simple action is actually remarkably complicated. The speed and fluidity of your gait can also offer clues about your health and how successfully you are ageing.

As we get older, muscles diminish in mass, strength and quality. Known as sarcopenia, this process starts from around our forties.

At the same time, the nervous system experiences "atrophy": nerves throughout the body work less effectively and their numbers fall.

Researchers estimate that, from ages 20 to 60, people lose 0.1% of their neurons, or nerve cells, each year. The rate of loss then accelerates.

By the age of 90, the brain may have lost 150 g of tissue compared with its weight at 50.

Walking speed, ageing and neurological health

Research has found that walking speed at 45 is a strong indicator of physical and mental health in later life. Walking pace also declines noticeably after the age of 60.

A slower, less fluid gait may be an early sign of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disrupts messages from the brain to the musculoskeletal system. As a result, gait may become slower, less symmetrical and more unsteady. These changes can be slight, but detectable, in the early stages of the condition.

Cognitive decline is associated with a substantially reduced stride length and a longer time needed to complete each stride.

Walking is also a complex process intended to prevent us from catching our feet and tripping. Muscles at the front of the shin lift the foot as the leg swings forwards. In some people, this mechanism begins to fail, leading to trips.

Foot drop and tripping

This is called "foot drop": the foot falls downwards, allowing the toes to strike the floor and create a tripping risk. It can result from nerve damage caused by diabetes, as well as from sitting cross-legged or holding certain yoga positions for long periods.

Narrowing of the arteries

Pain in the gluteal muscles, along the back of the leg or even in the calf that develops during walking and goes away once you stop could indicate peripheral arterial disease.

This pattern of pain appearing with movement and disappearing during rest is known as claudication. It occurs when the arteries delivering blood to the legs become narrowed. Walking increases the muscles' need for oxygen.

Because narrowed arteries cannot supply enough blood to meet this oxygen demand, the leg muscles become anaerobic, meaning they lack oxygen, and release lactic acid. Lactic acid produces the cramping sensation. Once you stop moving, however, the muscles require very little oxygen and the pain fades.

Smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes are all risk factors for peripheral artery disease. A family history of vascular disease also raises the risk.

Staggering

An unsteady, staggering walk accompanied by balance difficulties is commonly linked with excessive alcohol intake, but it may also point to a vitamin B12 deficiency.

In adults, symptoms can take months or even years to develop. In children, they can emerge much faster because the nervous system is maturing and vitamin B12 has an important role in protecting it against disorders.

Fortunately, vitamin B12 deficiency is usually relatively easy to treat with injections, which are well tolerated in most cases. For some people, increasing dietary sources of B12, including meat, fish, eggs and dairy products, may be sufficient to eliminate symptoms.

Problems affecting the inner ear, including labyrinthitis, can temporarily impair balance and gait. They generally clear up without treatment.

An inner-ear infection causes abnormal movement of fluid in that area of the ear. This makes the nerve signals travelling from the ear to the brain difficult to interpret, meaning the body cannot fully combine them with visual and positional information.

Ageing inevitably makes walking less smooth and effortless. But if you find yourself tripping, staggering or falling more often, or if walking has become harder over a short period, it is worth speaking to your doctor.

Adam Taylor, Professor and Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.