5 Things To Look Out For To Keep Your Grandparents Mobile

Hello and welcome back to the ThreeSpires Physiotherapy blog where we take a look at all things physiotherapy and health related. Recently I wrote a couple of blogs about how to keep your mum/dad/grandparents mobile and also did another blog about my 5 top exercises. This time I thought we could continue in the same theme and look at the 5 most important things (in my opinion) to look out for if you are worried about your grandparents’ mobility. After all prevention really is better than cure and nowhere is this more true than in the world of physiotherapy and elderly rehabilitation. Being able to catch things early and prevent a decline is so much better than only doing something when things have got to a crisis point. At this point I have to give you the usual disclaimer: if you have any serious medical concerns then you really do need to contact a doctor, this advice is meant to help you decide if your grandparents are beginning to slow down and may need help.

Why is it Important to be Aware of Your Grandparent's Mobility?

I guess before we continue it is good to have an understanding of why being aware of the state of your grandparents' mobility is important. If you are young and fit it is sometimes difficult to recognise and relate to the difficulties that people have as they age and how this can affect them. Being able to get up and walk around is vital to staying fit and healthy and having a good quality of life, losing this ability tends to happen slowly and over a number of years and has grave consequences for the person involved. As it usually happens slowly and over a long period of time, losses in mobility can be hard to pick up and often can go unnoticed until it is too late. Becoming less mobile may seem like a natural part of getting older - especially if you are young and fit yourself and as such you may tend to look at your grandparents and think: "I know they are looking a bit wobbly but they are getting on a bit!". It is important to understand that losing mobility is not an inevitable part of aging, going grey and having wrinkles may be but losing mobility and being unable to walk well is not. Losing mobility and becoming unsteady is a clear sign that this person has difficulties with their strength, balance and fitness that need to be addressed quickly before things get worse.

A tendency for many older people is to do a bit less each year and try to avoid the things that they have difficulties with - my opinion is that this is storing up trouble for later on in life. For example: if you slowly do a bit less and become a bit less active each year, slowly but surely your strength, balance, fitness and resilience will decline. This won't happen quickly and as such it will be hard to spot but eventually you will find yourself becoming more and more tired by day to day tasks such as the cleaning or shopping and again you are likely to put this down to age. Eventually, you may have an illness that requires a hospital admission such as a fall, infection or possibly you break a bone. At this point if you have been working hard, staying strong and fit and healthy you will be in a good position to make a full recovery once you are well again. However, if already you are finding walking and every day tasks difficult this illness may well take you completely off your feet and mean that you have a very long road to making a recovery (if this is at all possible).

What are the 5 Key Things to Look out for to Keep Your Grandparents Mobile?

Okay, so enough about why it is important to be aware of the signs that yoru grandparents are losing mobility, what are the actual key things you need to look out for to see if they are losing mobility. Below I have tried to list, from my point of view as a physiotherapist working with elderly patients in their homes, my top 5 signs that you need to look out for. These are things that I ask patients about on a daily basis and are sure signs that their mobility has been worsening.

1. Do they reach for or use the furniture when walking around the home? This is generally a sure sign that their balance has become affected and they are feeling less confident about walking without falling. Often this can be quite subtle, so you may need to see it quite a few times before it becomes obvious. Reaching for furniture or daily objects such as the sideboard in the kitchen generally means that someone is not happy when asked to walk across an open area and feels as if they may fall. You may think, oh well it doesn't matter as long as they are able to keep walking around the house but in fact it will very quickly begin to limit their activities by meaning that they will be uncomfortable going outside into the garden or walking around the supermarket or going to a restaurant. All of these activities generally require you to walk across an open space unaided at some point. Getting to the car and back will very quickly become an issue, as will going into an unfamiliar or bigger house. If unchecked eventually your grandparent will very quickly become reluctant to go out, leave the house or do their own shopping and this will further compound their mobility problems. 

 

2. Have they stopped doing a usual walk? By this I mean a wide range of things. For instance it could be that they had a regular weekly walking group that they would go out with or possibly they would regularly go out at the weekend for a walk in the park or countryside and these things seem to have stopped. Often there will be a seemingly reasonable explanation such as the weather has been bad and then they were ill and somehow they never seem to have got back to it. Or it could be that they used to walk for the paper, walk the dog or walk to do their shopping and now they are taking the car. It is vtal that as someone gets older and more at risk of losing mobility that they persevere with activities such as going for a walk. Stopping and avoiding walking will only mean that your grandparent's mobility will get worse rapidly. Again, as with the other things listed, this will be a subtle thing that will seem small at the time but eventually over a number of years is part of a decline in mobility that needs to be kept in check.

 

3. Have they stopped doing a regular exercise class, sport or going to the gym? Again this can be a wide range of things and often they will have stopped for seemingly good reasons such as weather, illness or the class stopped over the holidays and they just never got round to restarting. As described above it really is essential that your grandparent keeps up with these kind of activities as they help with maintaining muscle mass, strength, bone density, balance and general fitness. Stopping participating in regular exercise will only mean that their strength and mobility will fall, often it will take a long period of time before the effects of stopping this regular exercise are seen and for this reason it is hard to spot that their mobility is declining. Certainly when assessing elderly patients whose mobility has declined, when I look through their past history with them they will often describe being healthy and fit and having a regular exercise routine that they stopped in the past and then at some period after stopping their mobility declined. Most of these patients will then express a wish that they had bever given this up and that they had kept fit, strong and mobile.

 

4. Have they had a fall? Obviously anyone can trip and fall over, we all do it from time to time but in the elderly it can often be a sign that their balance and confidence in mobilising has declined. This is very much a key question that I ask anyone elderly on pretty much a daily basis, as a history of falls is the most likely indicator of having a further fall and losing mobility. Falling over as described in other blogs is the largest cause of hip fractures in elderly patients which will most likely involve a large operation and long period in hospital to recover from. From the persepctive of someone, young, fit and healthy it can be hard to understand what having a fall when you are much older means. For anyone, young a fall just means you tripped, fell over and got up again. For someone older, like your grandparents, a fall is not just a one off event from catching their feet on a step, it is a clear sign that their balance and mobility has declined. It can, as long as nothing is broken, act as a warning to both the family and the grandparent involved that they need to try to improve their balance, fitness and strength quickly. 

 

5. Have they bought a walking stick? Now here I don’t mean have they bought some walking poles to help with their knees on long 20 mile walks! I simply mean do they now own a walking stick and have started using it when outdoors? Again this is a sign that they have lost confidence in their balance or are finding it tiring when walking longer distances. Now, I am not saying that if you see one of your grandparents using a stick you need to kick it away from them and take it off them! It may well be that they do need the stick and without it they will be likely to fall. I am simply saying that you need to see their usage of a stick as evidence that their balance, mobility and strength is declining and that they need to try to improve things. Amongst many people who are young and fit, there is a general idea that as you get odler you will need a stick and that this is a normal part of aging. As a physiotherapist I can tell you that this is simply not the case and I have seen many 80 and 90 year olds who are able to walk without a stick - from assessing these patients it is always clear that teh big difference between them and someone who is 70 and needing a walking stick (in general - there are obviously exceptions) is that they have worked hard at staying fit and active all their life and have not accepted a decline in mobility and strength as inevitable. 

For anyone reading this blog about signs to look out for regarding your grandparents mobility, my key takeaway message would be that you need to avoid thinking of decreasing mobility and increasing "dodderiness" as an inevitable part of aging. Rather I would advise you to think that these are signs that your grandparent has been letting themselves go and not keeping as fit and strong as they need to. 

Clearly there are likely to be many more signs of reduced balance and mobility but the ones I have listed above tend to be early signs of a loss of confidence and are the key things I am looking for as a physio seeing elderly patients in the community. As a physiotherapist it is often very clear when assessing a patient whose mobility is drastically reduced that this has been a long process and it would have been so much better to have caught things much earlier. Catching things early when the changes are only minor is so much better and has, in my experience, much better outcomes for patients. When I see someone as a physio at home and they describe a minor issue with balance but they are generally keeping fit and doing a lot of activity, it is so much easier to make a significant difference in terms of mobility and strength rather than when I see someone whose mobility has declined drastically over a long period and they are now needing help to stand walk. 

Okay, I hope that you have enjoyed the blog. If you or anyone you know needs help with mobility or needs an assessment for their mobility then please get in touch. We are a home visit physiotherapy service based in Lichfield and providing physiotherapy in Sutton Coldfield, Tamworth, Cannock, Rugeley and Walsall.