Adaptive Footwear Can Aid Comfort and Joint Health While Helping You Prevent Falls

While the average person is unlikely to do high jumps or run marathons, even daily life can wear out our joints. Over time, this wear may become apparent through pain. Age aside, diseases such as arthritis can eat away at our joints and cause inflammation, as well. The result of these assaults can be damaged hips and knees, and malformed feet and toes. Wise people learn that supportive, adjustable footwear can make or break our day, and that’s where Silverts can help.

Extra wide for inflamed and non-aligned toes

The pressure of shoes on sore or twisted joints can force even people who once had narrow feet into sandals year around. This happened to my mother, and I’ll attest that it was a nightmare in our cold climate. Yet buying her regular shoes with a wide toe made them too large elsewhere. I wish we’d had a choice at the time like Silverts extra wide shoes. Since these are easy-on, easy-off, as well, she’d have loved them.

Swelling feet and ankles

My mother had problems not only with painful, twisted toes but with swelling feet and ankles. At the time, finding a shoe with a hook and loop fastening was a challenge so she’d have to wear her slippers in public. They didn’t offer any support, which contributed to her knee and hip pain, but even more important to her at the time, she found it humiliating. An adjustable shoe or sandals for senior women would have made all the difference. As with all simplified dressing, these easy-on easy-off shoes can be helpful for people living with dementia as well as their caregivers.

Joint replacement

Worn out or diseased joints are often surgically replaced, yet artificial joints are not your joints of youth. Mom found that after two hip replacements, walking any distance or standing long in her slippers (the only thing she could get on) caused pain. Silverts shoes would not only have supported Mom better overall, but they’d have fit around her swelling feet. Additionally, some styles feature removable insoles so that people can use them with an orthotic device. This is handy if a joint replacement leaves you with uneven legs.

Safety first

The shoes we wear can influence our balance which translates to a fall prevention strategy. The right shoe can prevent the slip or trip that can bring an older person to the ground. Other footwear characteristics such as collar height, good tread, and a correct heel can contribute to a safer walking gait and confidence in one’s balance.

Easy on and off

People with joint challenges can find bending over to put on traditional shoes difficult and tying laces with arthritic hands painful and challenging. Even for people who have a willing assistant, putting shoes on another person isn’t easy. So, well-fitting but easy-on, easy-off shoes make life smoother for everyone. Silverts zippered easy-access shoes can do this for both men and women – with style!

These options weren’t readily available in Mom’s time, but thankfully, they are in yours. Check out the options on Silverts.com and see for yourself.

Carol Bradley Bursack spent more than two decades as the primary caregiver for a combination of seven elders and is the author of “Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories.” She is also a long-time newspaper columnist, blogger, and writer for online websites on the topics of eldercare and caregiver support. She’s been hosting her blog at www.mindingoureldersblogs.com and her website at www.mindingourelders.com since 2006 and has contributed to a number of books on dementia caregiving.