Helping people see better
Andy MacKellar • February 15, 2022
How to help navigate after a stroke. Do people get lost ? In their own home ?
I have been helping this lady with walking practice and she was having difficulty placing the stick in the best place for helping the balance.
Adding coloured strips to shoe and stick helped to line things up, and made balance safer.
I also recommend using similar ideas for brake levers on wheelchairs, which are invariably difficult to see against a bland background. Same goes for the release levers on the footplates, which can be equally hard to spot. Why are they made this way ? No matter as it's an easy one to improve. Try it and let me know whether it helps.
This is one of the many ways your local friendly physio can help. It isn't always just about exercises, sometimes little changes to your surroundings are enough to improve perception, and hence to improve function.
I do think that these ideas can help people so that they don't get lost in their own home. By that I mean making mistakes in judgement when moving, most commonly when trying to get through a doorway, and not leaving enough room to one side. Again get some advice on how to prevent this. Just ask.
Thanks, Andy
Physio for Stroke, Head Injury, Parkinson's Disease, Spinal Cord Injury
Being afraid of falling so much or so frequently can dominate after Stroke
The Neuro Trac Rehab muscle stimulator is very straightforward to use regularly
There aren't Seven, they're not very secret and don't all start with an S. Read on...
I have reviewed lots of other peoples CVs in the past, and always found it hard to get a real idea of the person behind it. Here is my own first attempt at an improvement.
There are Seven main elements to any exercise programme. Whether you are a top flight sports person, or someone recovering from major illness or injury, your exercise plan needs to include exercises that do all of these things. It's going to vary according to the level that you are already at, and of course what the aim is. For some, your aim might be to walk ten metres, for others it might be to run a four minute mile. The advice works for everyone. The seven points to ponder are: 1. Stamina. 2. Strength 3. Speed 4. Suppleness ( stretch ) 5. Surge ( plyometrics ) 6. Skill 7. pSychology ( meditation, cognitive therapies etc.) 8. Sustenance ( nutrition ) 9. Sleep ! That's right Nine. And if anyone can suggest more I would be happy to listen. I still call it the Seven Secret S's though, as only 7 of them include exercise forms.
A simple home treatment method for sore necks and shoulders. If you want to try this kind of self treatment you will need guidance with this, so drop us a line and we can meet by video link. Our video link is totally secure, but needs no knowledge of adding software to your computer, phone or tablet.
If you learn a bit about how you are built, we think it will be easier to follow home exercises and self treatment procedures that we teach people to use at home. We'd love to improve these as always, so do share your criticisms and ideas. We won't take it personally. We'll just make it better.
We've been working with video exercise "handouts" for the last 12 years, so it was a relatively straight forward adjustment to maximise this element when the Corona virus lockdown started. We still visit some of our patients, but many are benefitting from Skype, What's App and Zoom calls. We also have our own system built into our notes system that requires no knowledge of programmes to download or other hurdles with the famous systems mentioned. The software company that runs the system has even featured us in a case study about using this kind of working. It's helping us now, as we all live with the lockdown situation, but we think it will become part of the future anyway. That's because it's better in some ways. By that I mean that we can easily add in a 10 minute consultation by video link on a day when we wouldn't plan a full visit, which takes an hour in your home, and probably adds at least half an hour travel time to our day. It can just help to check that a home exercise is being done accurately, and encouraging enough to help people really get stuck in to their rehabilitation at home. And in a more independent way than if we are there with you. So we think that it will change our working practices for the better in future.
Who knew there was so much to say about your big toe ? The joint that attaches your toe to the main part of the foot is key to walking. So it needs to be flexible enough to provide the propulsion stage of walking. This clip shows how you can have a go at improving the range of movement in the big toe joint, and the effects ought to be two fold. One is improvement in any pain that you experience and the other is to have better gait or style when walking. Do send your comments and share your experience if you try this at home.
One of my favourite electronic muscle stimulators is the Neurotrac Rehab. It's very cost effective at around the £90 mark, but under the bonnet its surprisingly adaptabel, with 19 programmes for stimulating muscle recovery after stroke, to TENS signals for pain relief. TENS has in my experience been one of the most effective treatments for Thalamic or Central post stroke pain. It doesn't necessarily completely take away the pain, but is very safe and has no side effects in itself. The worst I have seen is a light rash, simply down to a reaction to the glue in the self adhesive electrode pads that stick on to the skin. The few that I have seen this happen to have all been able to continue after switching brands of the electrodes themselves.
