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Dear Listmembers, I copied most of the postings on July 9th and 10th on the subject of falling and sent them to Aliza's niece,Prof.Jan Bruckner, author of: The Gait Workbook(1998) Slack Inc.,6900 Grove Rd.,Thorofare,NJ 08086 E-mail: [log in to unmask] and the accompanying videotape: People walking:Pathological patterns and normal cjanges over the life span, ISBN# 1-55642-350-0,Price:$39.95(order#43500) Website: http://www.slackinc.com Jan is a Prof. of Physical Therapy and Anthroplology at Northeastern Univ.,Boston. She did her PH.D. research on studies of how early man learned to walk,developing four-dimensional computer models of walking patterns. She replied as follows: Gil Lieberman,CG for Aliza ------- Hi Gil-- I'm in the throes of trying to get ready for our trip to England so I was not able to read all of your posting on PD and falling. As far as I know what Thomas J. Riess is saying is not in accord with current thinking in the field of motor control. Losing one's balance is not directly related to step or stride length. There is a ground reaction force vector at each joint in the lower extremity and pelvic girdle and the body must generate sufficient range of motion and muscle contraction to counter these forces. Each segnment of the body contributes either towards maintaining balance or inhibiting it. Jacqueline Perry* has shown that arm swing is not necessary for normal gait but many people with pathological problems use arm swing as a counter-weight and it assists with forward momentum. I am not familiar with the U-Step walker but we can try and find it on the web. Anything that widens ones base of support provides increased stability. There are circular versions of walkers that people use with infants who are pre-ambulatory which enable the child to be up-right and move from place to place. The U-Step sounds like an adult version. Gait and motor control of locomotion is more complex than the people on the PD list seem to think. There is no one variable that can be easily changed that will correct the problem. Perhaps you should work through my gait book. It will give you an idea of the biomechanics and neurophysiology involved in walking. Then you should look at the videotape. First identify the gait deviations and determine why they are occurring. Since all of the people are walking independently all of them have solved the physics problems satisfactorily. The deviations show you their initial problem and their compensations. You will see people with arm swing problems. If you would really like to understand normal gait, balance and falling, here's a place to start. Love, Jan *Perry J.(1992),Gait Analysis:Normal and Pathological Function. Slack 1992.