Fear Of Falling Essay

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Recommended: On the Concepts of Fear

Fear is a physiological response to perceived danger. The perception of danger may be conditioned by genetics and a person’s previous experiences. In a life or death situation it can be an essential response to overcome extreme conditions when there is no time for rationalisation. However, in an advanced society, for adults under most circumstances the fear response is not beneficial. More so it can be detrimental, as in fear of dogs, fear of public speaking, or fear of falling for example. An initial bad experience or the bad experience of others can lead to an association of fear with all instances of a particular situation or entity. Fear of falling reduces the quality of life for elderly people. Recent studies have separately investigated …show more content…

In this case it may be worth making a pharmacologic intervention to help them overcome their fear. Merel Kindt and Marieke Soeter from Biomedical Science centers in The Netherlands conducted a human trial of the β-blocker propranolol to determine whether it could prevent the recall of a fear memory. Thirty equal ratio male and female participants were trained to fear a specific stimulus by showing them the stimulus and then applying an electric shock. The control group received the stimulus but no electric shock. One day later the participants received 40mg of either propranolol (can pass through the blood-brain barrier) or nadolol (cannot pass through the blood brain barrier). The participants were then presented with the fear stimulus and followed by eye-blink startle reflex to a loud noise by electromyography (EMG). The group of people who received propranolol but not nadolol showed a significant decrease in startle fear responses to the stimulus. It is possible that this protocol could be applied to elderly people extremely limited by fear of falling. For example, they could take propranolol the night to reduce their fear of falling before going out the next day. This would require additional human trials in order to

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