Advice Offered To Prevent Falls Around The Home

As you get older it can get more difficult to move around your home and carry out day-to-day tasks than it used to be. One of the biggest potential problems for elderly people in the UK and elsewhere in the world is falls.

These can often lead to reduced mobility and can even result in hospital stays, so fall prevention is certainly worth worrying about.

Myfox8 recently offered some advice on the best ways to prevent falls as you get older, which included doing regular exercise and having regular eye tests.

However, there is a lot you can do around the home too. Removing loose rugs that you could trip on is a simple step to take, as is ensuring there is good lighting at all times of the day to ensure you can see where you’re going.

Bathrooms are naturally areas where slips and falls are more likely to occur, so do everything you can to make these spaces as safe as possible. Products like easy access showers could make all the difference if you’re starting to struggle with your mobility, so installing them sooner rather than later is the best way to prevent a fall or slip.

The York Press recently reported on a trial being conducted in the University of York to look at ways of preventing falls among the elderly. The researchers are also looking at how home assessments from occupational therapists could be key to helping people understand and make the right modifications to their home to prevent falls.

What To Think About When Designing Easy Access Bathrooms

There may well come a time when you need to reassess the design of your house, whether it’s to cater for your own changing needs or a family member. These days, there’s an awful lot you can do to make living at home easier if required and there are lots of different ways you can change your house to ensure you can stay there for as long as possible and remain independent.

For example, you could invest in ergonomic door handles for the various rooms in the house to make it easier to open doors. This can also be extended into the shower to make taps easier to turn on and off as well.

Or you could take a look at your easy access showers – what’s the water pressure like? Older skin can be a lot more sensitive so buying a shower that has a gentler flow could be a good idea.

Think about temperature as well. Hot water can scald people very easily and in older generations this could result in a serious injury, so having products that can be thermostatically controlled would be wise so water temperature remains the same – and safe.

Another point to bear in mind is failing eyesight. If you or someone in your family is experiencing sight loss, it would be a good idea to buy taps and so on that have very clear – and large – markings so that it’s easy to tell the difference between hot and cold.

If you’d like further advice, get in touch with us at Practical Bathing today.

Advice Offered To Modify Your Home For MS

Receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) can be devastating. The disease of the central nervous system can take several forms, but all of them lead to a loss of control over certain functions of the body, causing disability.

When you’re diagnosed with the condition it can be hard to know what’s best to do, but thinking about how to make your life easier, both now and as the disease progresses, is essential.

Earlier this month, Multiple Sclerosis News Today offered some advice on the top home modifications to make if you’re suffering from the disease. This included making sure you have access to your home without steps – which may mean installing a ramp – and having low-pile carpets or non-carpet flooring in your property.

Rooms such as the bathroom and kitchen are likely to need a little more work, the website suggested, but there are a number of small changes that can make using these spaces easier for those with MS.

In the bathroom, you should consider fitting a shower chair and grab rails outside the shower and bath. Easy access showers are a must, which means the shower should have a low threshold, or no threshold at all.

Where the kitchen is concerned, lever operated taps, front-loading appliances and raised dishwashers are all recommended.

In some cases, MS can lead to bladder and bowel problems, which can be hard to manage when you’re out and about. MS-UK highlighted a new app that’s been produced by the Bladder and Bowel Community that offers a digital version of its toilet card – a discreet way to tell people you need a loo – as well as using GPS to help you find the nearest public toilet.

Will Election Candidates Sign Pledge For Those With Muscle-Wasting Conditions

Charity Muscular Dystrophy UK, which provides support for people in the country living with rare muscle-wasting conditions, has called on parliamentary candidates to sign up to a pledge to support and fight for the rights of people affected by these illnesses.

It has set out seven pledges that it is sending to all candidates in the UK general election, which are due to take place on 8 June, and is asking them all to sign up to them.

The pledges include working to ensure that patients receive access to emerging treatments for muscle-wasting conditions as quickly as possible after Brexit, and meeting with young campaigners in their area to help remove barriers to living independently with one of these conditions.

Another of the pledges is to ensure people with muscle-wasting conditions have access to the care, support and equipment they need to live happy and fulfilling lives. This could cover everything from specialist physiotherapy and emotional support to easy access showers and respiratory support equipment.

According to the charity, there are 700,000 people in the UK who suffer from a rare or very rare muscle-wasting condition. The organisation provides support for people suffering from any one of more than 60 conditions, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy, among many others.

Earlier this year, Muscular Dystrophy UK launched a campaign to raise awareness of the number of people being forced to return Motability vehicles while they appeal the decision to remove their benefits as they transfer from Disability Living Allowance to the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) framework.

The charity claims that losing their car has a devastating effect on quality of life and stressed that the system is in need of reform.

Care Homes Could Cost ‘Half House Price’

With the cost of care homes ever increasing, could the better solution be to modify your home with easy access showers and baths for elderly relatives?

Royal London carried out a research study across the area of south Derbyshire and Burton, finding that even just a short stay in a care home for the elderly or disabled could end up costing you up to half the price of your home.

The study showed that although costs of care homes vary between postcodes across the country for an average stay of around 30 months you could be looking at paying out around £50,000 to £93,000.

A former pension’s minister spoke to Burton Mail and said “Successive governments have failed to grasp the nettle when it comes to care costs. For more than 20 years we have had a series of Royal Commissions, expert reports and policy papers, but little has changed.”

The UK has an ageing population, with more and more elderly depending on younger people for long-term care, both in support and finance. This can eat up the cost of a family home which otherwise would have been inherited.

With care homes becoming increasingly more expensive and unaffordable option for people, could the best solution now be to invest money into your home to assist you in your daily life, by fitting easy access baths and showers, bidet toilet seats and stair lifts. For a lot of people this affordable option will allow them to stay in their own home giving back some independence without having to foot such a large bill.

‘Sector Champions’ To Represent Disabled Consumers

Disabled consumers in the UK are set to be given a new voice, through the appointment of 11 sector champions. The Department for Work and Pensions has launched the initiative to make businesses more accountable to those with disabilities.

The sectors covered under this scheme are retail, music, leisure, tourism, hotels, media, advertising, airports, buses, banking and gaming.

Minister for disabled people Penny Mordaunt told the BBC: “As a public advocate for accessibility, these champions will help businesses realise the value of disabled consumers and the importance of catering to every customer’s needs.”

Among the champions who have been appointed are Suzanne Bell, chief executive of Attitude is Everything, who will cover music; Jane Cole, managing director at Blackpool Transport Services, who will cover buses; and Jo Twist, chief executive of UKIE, who will look at gaming.

Meanwhile, head of marketing, press and publicity at Channel 4 Dan Brooke was appointed as the media champion. He told the Guardian that Channel 4 had been making a concerted effort to increase the number of disabled people featured in its programming.

As well as running extensive coverage of the Paralympic Games, the TV channel has also included more disabled people in programmes such as Gogglebox, the Island, First Dates and Hollyoaks.

While more work is being done to make the wider world more accessible to those with disabilities, there are things that you can do at home to make your property easier to use if you have a disability.

Installing an easy access shower could make all the difference to what you can do by yourself in the bathroom, while a host of other products from shower seating to bath lifts can also be fitted to make everyday tasks a bit easier.

What Is The Advantage Of A Wet Room?

If you’re considering revamping your bathroom this year, or have decided you need to make some changes to make it easier for you to use, you should think about installing a wet room.

Unlike a bathroom, a wet room is entirely waterproof and can be beneficial in many scenarios, but particularly for people who have reduced or restricted mobility. The main reason for this is that a wet room removes the need for a shower cubicle, which can be difficult to access if you struggle with your mobility.

They also tend to be safer for people with poor mobility, as they simply walk into the room and under the shower – there is no need to install a tray or bath, which can be hard to climb in and out of.

Of course, one essential component of any wet room an anti-slip floor, and you can always install additional anti-slip mats under the easy access shower, for instance, for extra safety.

Wet rooms are also incredibly easy to clean, as you don’t have all those fixtures and fittings to clean around – you can wipe down the tiles and around the drain in minutes.

And it isn’t only people with disabilities or the elderly who are installing wet rooms in their properties – they have become increasingly stylish in recent years and are now a good addition to any home, particularly if they are one of two bathrooms.

A wet room can also be a brilliant choice if you have a small bathroom, as you can save space by doing away with bulky shower cubicles that encroach on the room.

Can Exercise Keep Dementia At Bay?

If dementia runs in your family and you want to make sure all generations are as protected as they can be, you might find the results of a new study published in the Neurology journal of interest.

Conducted by the University of British Columbia, the research found that elderly people who already have thinking and memory problems could benefit from increasing the amount they exercise.

Study participants with an average age of 74 and who had mild vascular cognitive impairment who did one-hour exercise classes three times a week for six months registered a small improvement on tests of overall thinking skills than those who did no exercise.

Teresa Liu-Ambrose, lead author of the study, said: “This result, while modest, was similar to that seen in previous studies testing the use of drugs for people with vascular cognitive impairment. However, the difference was less than what is considered to be the minimal clinically importance difference of three points.”

She went on to say that more studies are required so as to determine whether exercise can improve thinking in people with this kind of condition.

According to the Alzheimer’s Society, there are many benefits of exercise for people with dementia, including improving heart health to reduce high blood pressure and heart disease risk, improving physical fitness, keeping bones strong, improving self-esteem and confidence, improving mood, and reducing the risk of falls since balance and strength will be improved as well.

People in the early stages of dementia should be encouraged to carry on with activities that they have always enjoyed.

Looking for easy access showers? See what we’ve got here at Practical Bathing.