Living with arthritis can be painful and it might even feel too difficult for your senior at times. There are some things that you can do to help.
Gather Some Information about Living with Arthritis
When you have information about specific health issues, that gives you what you need to approach the situation the right way. With arthritis, this means that you’ll find what you need to know about how arthritis affects your senior’s joints and what might help her to deal with what she’s experiencing. There’s a lot of research about arthritis, both new advanced research and older tried and true research.
Remind Her to Move a Little
One way that people with arthritis tend to experience pain is that they end up in one position longer than they expect. That’s often why your senior’s joints are more likely to be sore and stiff in the morning after lying in bed all night. The same thing can happen during the day. If your elderly family member is staying in one position for too long, she might find that she’s sore and it hurts to try to move. Trying to be aware of that and moving a little more often can help.
Consider Exercise
Something else to consider, especially if your senior’s doctor agrees, is to start an exercise plan with your senior. Just engaging in activities that your elderly family member enjoys can do so much to help her body to feel a little bit better. Lots of times people with arthritis pain, especially in hips and knees, worry that exercise will make things worse. As long as your senior is sticking with her doctor’s recommendations about exercise, it can help her to feel better.
Look for Ways to Modify Your Senior’s Home
Home modifications could be a solution, too. Very often parts of her home that were just fine for years are now a lot more difficult for her to enjoy or to operate now that she’s dealing with arthritis. Switching out faucets that use knobs for ones that use levers can be a tremendous help. Likewise, doorknobs frequently can become a problem if your senior has trouble gripping the knob itself.
It can also help to bring elderly care providers in to help your senior. Having assistance from elderly care aides who know how difficult it can be to push through arthritis pain can make your elderly family member’s life a lot easier.