How Can Stairlifts Help with Knee Pain?
Do you think stairlifts are only for those who use a wheelchair or walker? Think again. A stairlift can be incredibly beneficial to anyone who regularly struggles with going up and down the stairs in their home. This includes those with daily knee pain from old injuries, osteoarthritis, or other medical conditions. Keep reading to learn more about how installing a stairlift can help with your knee pain and overall mobility. Contact our stairlift and residential elevator company in Louisiana to learn more about your options if you need a way to get around your home more efficiently.
Reduce Joint Strain
The knee is an incredibly complex joint and very prone to injuries. While it's a good idea to move your body and work your joints as much as is safe for your current health, it can also be essential to reduce strain on your joints whenever possible. Going up and down stairs—especially if you don't have an effective range of motion in your body—can be pretty jarring to your knees. Each step down can create a sudden impact, and each step up can pull on the ligaments in the joint. If you have persistent knee pain, removing stairs from the equation may be best.
Using a stairlift to go up and down your home's stairs can eliminate that daily impact on your joints so that you're not experiencing severe knee pain by the end of the day. Instead, you can focus on lower-impact ways to exercise your joints, like Pilates, yoga, and aqua aerobics.
Minimize Morning Arthritis Pain
For those with arthritis, the morning is often the most painful part of the day. It takes time for your arthritis medication to kick in and your joints to become less stiff. Unfortunately, if your 2-story home is like most, all of its living spaces are on the bottom floor, while your bedroom is on the top floor. You'll have to work downstairs in the morning for breakfast and begin your day.
While it might seem like a simple task for those without arthritis, descending those stairs in the morning can be extremely painful when your knees are stiff, sore, and inflamed. A stair lift can provide a much more comfortable way to navigate your staircase in the morning when your arthritis pain is at its worst. Even if you don't need to use it for the rest of the day, this simple relief can make it much easier to start your day—every day.
Avoid Further Knee Injuries
Your joints are supported by the muscles that surround them. When those muscles lose their definition and strength—as they commonly do later in life—the joints are much more prone to injury because they lack the necessary support to stabilize them properly. For senior citizens, going up and down the stairs provides ample opportunity for a knee to buckle or hyperextend, resulting in further injury and pain in the joint.
If you instead rely on a stairlift to go up and down your stairs, you'll reduce the odds of experiencing a knee injury in this manner. Even if you are physically capable of going up and down the stairs, if it requires significant effort and you don't feel relatively stable, it's worth considering a stairlift for your home to prevent these kinds of injuries.
