Wellness

Diabetes and osteoporosis can work together to elevate your risk of falling and lower your quality of life. Ask a provider about whether you are at elevated risk for a fracture.

Does anyone in your family suffer from dementia? Cognitive impairment can affect how someone walks and keeps their balance.

Rushing to the bathroom in the middle of the night is uncomfortable and dangerous. Frequent urinary incontinence (UI) can make an older person almost twice as likely to fall.

Staying active can extend your day. Fatigue and anxiety often discourage less active older adults from physically demanding activity later in the day.

Is your fear of falling limiting you? Ask a provider about innovative balance and mobility training that you can do from the comfort of your own home.

Life after a stroke can be challenging. Make sure your plan of care includes mobility, strength, and balance training. These areas are key for social and health related quality of life.

Mobility issues can impact quality of life in adults of all ages. It is never too early to speak with a provider about therapy or training that can help establish sustained mobility.

Your new therapy routine may be uncomfortable; adaptation and habituation exercises are deliberately challenging. Discomfort in therapy will allow you to increase your quality of life.

As chronic disease rates rise, some providers have begun recommending patients attend self-management education programs. Unfortunately, however, these clinicians do not often have the means to coordinate with programs to ensure patients attend and adhere to classes and care plans.

Self-management education programs can be a valuable means of empowering a patient to take a greater role in managing a chronic disease. Before referring patients to a program, consider sampling its curriculum or developing a relationship with its educators.

Type 2 diabetes disproportionately affects people of lower socioeconomic status. Unfortunately, these patients are also necessarily the least likely to be able to afford the wearable sensors that can help them control their blood sugar.

Many patients have watches, phones, and tablets capable of collecting potentially informative diagnostic information around the clock. Patients report being more comfortable enlisting the health functionalities of their technology when they can share their data with a provider.

Patients who are fortunate enough not to injure themselves in a fall too often do not take action to lower their fall risk thereafter. Only a tenth of patients who present to emergency departments for falls go on to participate in fall interventions.

Cognitive decline is one of the largest threats to a patient’s sustained mobility and independence. Dementia increases an older adult’s fall risk by a factor of three.

Gait, balance, and attention deficits attributable to Alzheimer’s combine with typical age related instability to make activities of daily living dangerous. Alzheimer’s not only raises a patient’s fall risk; patients in this population actually tend to suffer more severe injuries as well.

Patients with vestibular disorders often rely on prodromal symptoms to inform decisions about daily living, including whether or not to drive. While useful, this kind of management can only supplement a provider’s consultation about what is safe for a patient.

Driving in weather or darkness can be especially dangerous for vestibular patients, who are more easily disoriented by disruptive visual stimuli. The same principle applies in the chaos of rush hour, when overstimulation becomes a challenge.

Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline undermine a patient’s independence on multiple fronts. Older adults with dementia are three times as likely to fall as their age matched peers. Evidence suggests falls among this population result in more severe injuries as well.

While modifications around the home can help an independent older adult navigate activities of daily living, renovating is not an intervention unto itself. The installation of compliant flooring neither prevents falls, nor protects patients from injuries. A course of vestibular rehabilitation therapy, however, can help with both.

Disorders that alter gait invariably elevate a patient’s fall risk. Migraine and Parkinson’s are two such conditions; patients with slower and shorter strides are more easily overwhelmed in the face of environmental obstacles.

Patient:

If you have a chronic disease, don’t be shy to ask your provider about taking a greater role in managing your condition. Patient education and self-management programs have been shown to improve outcomes.

Ask your provider how your smart phone or watch might be able to help you keep track of your health, and even manage your blood sugar.

A past fall is one of the strongest predictors of a future fall. Protect yourself from a costly fracture by asking a provider about physical and vestibular rehabilitation therapies.

Alzheimer’s Disease doesn’t just affect the brain. Ask a provider how balance therapy can protect your loved one from a dangerous fall.

Dementia is disorienting; patients with Alzheimer’s fall up to 3 times as often as those without. Ask a provider if your loved one could benefit from vestibular rehabilitation therapy.

Vestibular conditions can make activities of daily living, like driving, very dangerous. Stay in touch with how you feel, and always consult a provider about what is and isn’t safe for you.

As we get older, activities of daily living can become more difficult. Before you make sacrifices to your quality of life, ask a provider how physical therapy can keep you mobile, longer.

Not all falls are attributable to weakness or clumsiness; physical, psychological, and cognitive wellbeing are all critical parts of staying upright.