Relationship Between Obesity and Falls by Middle-Aged and Older Women Noah J. Rosenblatt, PhD, Mark D. Grabiner, PhD  Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation  Volume 93, Issue 4, Pages 718-722 (April 2012) DOI: 10.1016/j.apmr.2011.08.038 Copyright © 2012 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine Terms and Conditions

Fig 1 (A) In Study 2, subjects walked while wearing a full-body safety harness. A pneumatic obstacle was triggered to rise from the laboratory floor and obstruct the motion of the foot of the swing limb (ie, the left limb). Subjects then used either an elevating or lowering strategy to recover, as described in the text. Here a lowering strategy was used. The subject lowered the obstructed left foot to the ground prior to initiating a recovery step with the right limb (not shown). (B) The subject was completely supported by the safety harness well before she extended the recovery limb in front of her body and was categorized as a during-step faller. Four of 6 obese fallers were during-step fallers who, similarly, unsuccessfully attempted a lowering strategy with little or no stepping response of the recovery limb. Note that the BMI for the subject shown (BMI=42.1) is above the average for the obese group (BMI ± SD, 35.5±3.8). Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 2012 93, 718-722DOI: (10.1016/j.apmr.2011.08.038) Copyright © 2012 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine Terms and Conditions