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Home » Five Ways to Practice Fall Prevention
Falls are a tremendous problem for the aging population. Paying as much attention as you can to fall prevention can help your senior to avoid the experience.
Talk to Your Senior’s Doctor
It’s almost always best to start any health project for your senior by talking to her doctor. Your senior’s doctor understands her unique health and mobility challenges, which means that her doctor can give you a detailed plan for helping her to avoid a fall. There might be a variety of different things you can try to help your senior the most. Get a detailed list and start researching.
Consider an Exercise Plan
One of the suggestions your senior’s doctor might make could be starting a new exercise plan. The reasons for this are many, including improving her muscle tone and helping her to gain better balance and flexibility. There’s no need to rush into a complex exercise program. Slow and steady are the keywords for any plan that your senior puts into motion.
Make Sure You Understand How Her Medications Affect Her
Something else that your senior’s doctor might specifically mention could be any medications that she’s taking. Medications help her to improve her health issues, but they do that at a price. Side effects from medications can make your senior dizzier or drowsier than she really needs to be, which can contribute to a fall. Periodically reviewing her medications and how they’re affecting your senior is a good idea.
Encourage Your Senior to Use Assistive Devices Where Necessary
Assistive devices get a bad reputation and it can be difficult to get past that. Your senior sees a cane or a wheelchair and immediately is likely to have a negative reaction. She might see using these types of assistive tools as having failed or as evidence that she’s grown old and is being forced to use them. None of this is true. Assistive devices are all about giving your senior what she needs in order to continue to be as mobile and as independent as she’s able to be, nothing more.
Make Decluttering a Regular Activity
Reducing clutter is a habit that can go a long way toward helping your senior to avoid a nasty fall. The more that you reduce clutter around your senior, the less there is for her to run into or possibly trip over. This can be a big problem in households that typically have had a lot of stuff hanging around. You don’t have to strip your senior’s home down to a Spartan existence, but some form of regular decluttering does need to happen.
This is a lot for you to keep up with on your own. Working with home care providers gives you another set of experienced eyes that can help you to spot potential issues for your senior.