Heart disease is a common health issue that seniors battle. Often seniors worry that once they’re diagnosed with heart disease, there’s no way for them to improve their health. However, physical therapy can be a huge help for seniors as they seek tools to help them. There’s a lot that physical therapy can do to help seniors manage heart disease and improve their overall quality of life significantly.
Heart Disease and Seniors
Heart disease can express itself in a variety of different ways. Heart failure, coronary artery disease, arrhythmias, and other heart issues can all fall under the umbrella of heart disease. Very often these health conditions bring symptoms like chest pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, edema in the extremities, and more. These symptoms can impact mobility, independence, and quality of life.
Exercise, Heart Disease, and Physical Therapy
Physical therapists can work with seniors and their doctors to come up with a personalized exercise program that can help them manage heart disease. These types of programs often include a variety of different exercises like resistance training and aerobic exercise as well as balance and flexibility exercises. Exercise can help to lower blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, and improve heart function, so it’s often recommended for patients with heart disease.
Cardiac Rehabilitation
Cardiac rehabilitation is a specific type of exercise designed to help patients recover after a cardiac event or a procedure. After a heart attack, bypass surgery, or other type of heart procedure, patients often need extra help recovering. A physical therapist can design a plan for cardiac rehabilitation that covers the patient’s needs.
Managing Symptoms
Physical therapy can also help heart patients to manage symptoms that they might experience with their condition. Symptoms like muscle weakness, fatigue, and shortness of breath can be improved through a variety of different types of movements. Physical therapists can also help patients learn how to conserve their energy, pace themselves, and relax more.
Improving Mobility and Functional Independence
Mobility and functional independence often suffer when someone has heart disease. This affects everyday activities like walking from place to place, climbing stairs, and simply performing household tasks. Physical therapists can help patients understand better how they can perform these daily activities without causing themselves more pain or increasing other symptoms.
Lifestyle Modifications
Other lifestyle modifications, like changing dietary habits, quitting smoking, and learning to manage stress, also make a difference for heart patients. Physical therapists can help seniors to understand more about how these changes improve their lives and their health. This can make those changes easier for seniors to adopt, even when aren’t excited about some of these changes.
Physical therapy is a valuable tool that heart patients can use to learn as much as possible about heart disease and how it impacts them. Working with physical therapists helps seniors to put plans in place that can improve their overall health and help them feel better, too. They may even experience an overall improvement in their heart disease as they continue making progress.