hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and "I hope you feel better dinosaur," and today I'm
going to show you how to walk correctly with a walker. step 1.
move your dinosaur out of the way. so let's get started.
so as you can see I followed step one and
removed "I hope you feel better soon dinosaur," but on a serious note, you
definitely want to move your pets out of the way. dogs, cats, lizards, or even
children or grandchildren. and you know you think I'm joking a little bit, but I
have seen a lot of cases where people ended up tripping and falling because
their their pets were kind of in their way. so sometimes you know make sure that
you're getting them away, or you know making sure that they're a little bit
scared of the walkers so they don't come over to the walker. and so then you have
a whole bunch of safe areas to walk. so the biggest thing with a walker, and you
can see this one would be called a rolling walker where it has wheels on
the front. there's also things that are four-wheel Walker, usually the brand name
is rollator that has the seat in it. those aren't quite my favorites, but
something like this is really nice. sometimes they don't have wheels, so that
these would be different, but this is probably the most common thing you're
going to get especially if you've had a surgery and you're in the hospital this
is traditionally the one that they're going to give to you to leave the
hospital. you don't even have to get it yourself, where your insurance company
will get for you. so it's very similar to other assistive devices where when you
put your hands on it you want to have a slight bend in your
elbow. you know maybe 20 to 30 degrees. you don't want it to be where your arms
are straight out because then you're gonna have to kind of lean into it, and
you don't want it to be so high where your elbows are bent, we're just like
just jamming your humerus bone up into your shoulder because then that's going
to cause problems in your shoulders - so you want just a little bit of a bend. but
the biggest thing is you're not putting all your weight on the walker. so if you
see somebody and their arms are straight and they're pushing down like this, then
they're not quite using that walker right. it's an assistant device, it's not
basically you putting all your weight on it. so a little bit of a bend. and I'm
going to show you a couple things that I see with my patients that is what a lot
to do first. so a lot of times I'll see the two
extremes. I'll see somebody right in the Walker like this where their legs are
almost touching the front, which is not good. and then a lot of times, this is the
big one I see because I think sometimes people have back issues, is they're
actually you know I might be over exaggerating a little bit, but I'm really
not, pushing the Walker way out in front of them. and again that's kind of
defeating the point as well. I'm actually we're having to work harder doing that.
so if you are trying to help out a loved one, or you're caregiver, or even if you're
using the walk yourself where you want to be is your feet want to be kind of
lined up with that back row of legs here. so you're not completely in it and
you're not completely out of it. you're here where it's pretty comfortable and
you have a little bit of space where you're not going to run into that bar.
the other biggest thing is you don't watch your Walker to make noise once you
start using it. and what I mean by that is if you hear those legs scraping or
especially if you're on hard surface and you might hear it like squeaking like
that. I don't know if you can hear that, but that again means you're pushing on
it too hard. you want it to be a smooth motion while you're walking. so if I'm
walking, I'm just using it kind of as a guidance as I'm walking. and also if you
have wheels I see this a lot with people because the old more traditional walkers
didn't have wheels, and you'd have to pick it up and step and pick it up and
step. and I see patients do that a lot even when the wheels are on there. the
wheels are designed so you don't have to do that anymore. where you're kind of
stepping to it helps you have that more normalized a pattern or walking pattern.
so you're really just kind of walking normal but you have that support and
that stability of the walker. so again as you can see I'm not putting a whole lot
of weight on it, but it's giving me that support I need, and it's a lot more
stable than something like crutches or a cane because you have it on both sides,
and you don't have to independently move them or support them. so that's why it's
it's more support. so again having the right height, being in the right spot,
and not putting so much weight where you can barely move the Walker. so if you
again hear things like squeaking and making loud noises that probably means
either you're pushing too hard, or the person using is pushing it too hard. it
really is just there for some support. so I'll do one more time and looking
straight ahead. so there you have it. if you'd like to help support my channel,
make sure and click on the link up there, and don't forget to subscribe by
clicking down there. and remember be safe, have fun, I hope you feel better soon.