Motor Control: “Is it true if you don’t use it, you lose it?”

There is a common story that goes like this. An elderly woman (or man) living in a two story home is moved by her loved ones to a single story home to make it easier on her aging body. The stairs, of course, present a challenge.

Without the regular exposure to the burdensome stairs, the elderly woman avoids the exertion and potential danger of the stairs for some time. Then, of course, one day the woman is presented with some stairs again in some other context and she falls injuring her hip. 

Of course, this anecdotal (but common) story is far from proving causation, but hear me out. To oversimplify, you can think of the brain ordering the synapses that make up our capacities for motor control tasks from most relevant to least relevant. For this reason, for example, I can perform the choreography of a clean and jerk (which I do often) nearly perfectly without thinking about it but I’d fail to recall the guitar chords I once had mastered for my middle school talent show. 

I’d argue that the elderly woman in the example above had the physical facilities to walk down the staircase, but the synapse became less readily available in her brain to recall. There are two morales to this story:

1.Sheltering ourselves often makes us more fragile, and

2.If you want to keep your facilities, use them. 

We’re all getting older. Never forget that movement is a practice worth preserving. Demonstrating capacities is valuable for their own sake and are a built in insurance against losing them. 

Take the stairs as long as you can.