Ninety percent of senior falls happen in the bathroom. So many debilitating falls can be avoided with some forethought and planning. Fall prevention specialist Dr. Shawn Weiss joins Suzanne Newman on the Answers for Elders Radio Show to talk about environmental wellness, one of the eight foundational principles of senior wellness featured this summer in the Vitality Revolution podcast series. This segment focuses on the most dangerous part of the home: the bathroom.
Why is the bathroom the most dangerous room in the house? Dr. Shawn explains, "Think about all the tasks that we do in the bathroom. The most obvious one is the shower, the bath, because of the water, and the slipperiness, and being able to get out onto a safe surface and being able to reach all the areas of your body. It's a big safety issue. Also getting up and off of the toilet. Some of these toilets are very low and if you don't have a grab bar to help you get up, it can be a very dangerous place. Then you have all your grooming tasks. Think about the tasks you do every day in that one room. Sometimes you're getting dressed in that room, you're brushing teeth, and the bathroom is typically a smaller environment, so you don't have a lot of room to navigate. And if you have an assisted device or you have balance issues, then that's gonna create a problem."
Dr. Shawn adds, "I'm a big advocate for the Life Alerts. There's many companies out there that have the Life Alert necklaces, and watches, and buttons that you can use. They're waterproof, so that you should have them on all the time, especially if you are at risk, and you live alone, or spend any part of the day alone. You should be wearing these in case something like that happens, where you can instantly get help to the house.
"You want to get non-slip strips for the bottom of the bathtub or the shower, first and foremost. Do you need a seat or a bench? There are benches that go over the top of a tub that you can get in and sit on. There are shower chairs so you can sit down inside of a bathtub. Will you get a handheld shower, so that you can sit and do those types of things?
"I want to talk about lighting. How many times do seniors fall in the middle of the night, because they get up to go to the bathroom and they don't have sufficient lighting in a bathroom. Think about all the vision changes that are happening. Cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration. Did you get your most recent eyeglass prescription? When you're up at night, you're not wearing the glasses typically, right? So if you're getting up, especially with incontinence, and you have to get to the bathroom right now, so you're hurried. So then you have a double-whammy of not having appropriate lighting, or not having the motion sensors to where a light's gonna come on on your pathway to the bathroom or inside of the bathroom.
"Overall I see a lot of dark homes, and you want to start checking out the wattage of your bulbs. If you have low vision, anything that's going to change your depth perception or your ability to see outlines is gonna increase your risk for falling."
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