The Old Saying goes "If You Don't Use It You Lose It". This applies to many things, but it is especially true for the elderly community and those with dementia, Alzheimer, or other physical or mental ailments. It is easy to take your hands, legs, arms, mouth and brain when we are young and can use them with little to no effort. This is not the case for those with aging bodies and/or mental impairment. A person in their teens or twenties could break their leg, be laid up for recovery for a couple weeks and be back out living life to the fullest shortly after. If that same injury happens to someone in their 80's or older, that injury is not as easy to recover from. Not only does the injury take longer to heal, it also is more difficult for an older body to recover from immobility. a Geriatric patient who becomes bed bound for even just a couple weeks could lose significant mobility and maybe never recover their ability to walk again. With an older body, impairments can compound creating worsening symptoms. That broken pain leads to being bed bound, leads to loss of muscle mass, leads to more pain, leads to less active lifestyle, leads to loss of ability to walk. Factor in dementia or other forms of memory loss, without daily practice it is possible to lose the muscle memory to perform even the simplest of tasks. I realize these may seem like extreme examples, but in our experience in the industry we have seen move into our home post surgery and the families report that the resident was walking just fine before the surgery, but after being bed bound for a month have completely lost the ability to walk. Or another person going to the hospital after a fall and only being there for 1 week, but that bodily stress in tandem with the lack of freedom older generations can experience during hospitalization lead to this person being permanently wheelchair bound. This is why at The Promised Land Adult Family Home, we encourage our residents to be as independent as safely possible. This allows them to maintain their strength, dexterity, balance, and general health. Blood flow is extremely important and not keeping the body moving can lead to vascular restriction, edema (swelling) and in extreme examples; loss of appendages. not only does this freedom provide dignity for our residents, but it also gives them a sense of freedom that comes with mobility that is so important to their mental health and happiness. During Covid lock down, many nursing homes, assisted living, and other geriatric care facilities restricted their residents to their room which greatly impeded their ability to stay healthy and active. Many seniors were extremely impacted and even had their lives shorted from this loss of community, activity, and freedom.
