Bharti Sharma, physical therapist

Single Leg Stance – SLS

Stand on one leg and maintain your balance.  Use one hand or finger to assist if needed.

Repeat 5 times, hold for 30 seconds

Single Leg Stance – Retro SLS

Stand on one leg and maintain your balance.

Next, hold your leg out behind your body with your knee slightly bent.  Then return to original position.

Repeat 10 times, hold for 10 seconds.  Do two sets.

Single Leg Stance – Reach forward

Stand on one leg with the lifted knee slightly bent, and maintain your balance.

Next, reach forward with your opposite arm as far as you can without losing your balance.  Then return to original position.

Repeat 10 times, hold for 5 seconds.

Marching.

March in place raising alternating knees as high as tolerated.

Repeat 15 times, hold for 3 seconds.

Heel-Toe Walking on a Line

Position yourself on a line with one foot in front of the other.  Practice walking along the line by placing one foot directly in front of the other.

Easier: use a thicker line to walk on.  A caregiver may provide hand support for balance, or you can use a kitchen sink for support.

Repeat 15 times

Kleenex Box Step-Over

Start with standing behind a Kleenex box.

Step over the box with your right foot, making sure that you get a good heel strike.

Allow your weight to shift onto the forward foot.  Then return to the starting position.

Repeat 10-15 times with the right foot, then repeat 10-15 times with the left foot.

Standing Heel Raises

While standing, raise up on your toes as you life your heels off the ground.

Repeat 10 times, hold for 3 seconds.  Do 3 sets.

Step Ups

Start by facing the step.  Step up with the affected leg, followed by the unaffected leg.  Step pbak down with the unaffected leg, followed by the affected leg.  Keep your back in an upright position.

Repeat 10 times.  Do 2 sets.

Sit to Stand – no support

Start by scooting close to the front of the chair.  Next, lean forward at your trunk and reach forward with your arms and rise to standing without using your hands to push off from the chair.

Use your arms as a counter balance y reaching forward when sitting and lower them as you approach standing.

Repeat 10 times, hold for 1 second.  Do 2 sets.

Start by standing in front of a wall or other sturdy object.  Step forward with one foot and keep the toes of both feet pointed straight forward.  The leg behind you should be straight during the stretch.

Lean forward toward the wall and support yourself with your arms as you allow your front knee to bend until a gentle stretch is felt along the back of your rear leg. Increase the stretch by moving closer to the wall or bending the front knee.

Repeat 5 times, hold for 30 seconds.

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Mike and Joyce speak with Bharti Sharma, a physical therapist in North Carolina.

Bharti shares with us ways to stay balanced and decrease our risk of falls, including some simple exercises designed to address the most common problems. Earlier this year Dr. Gwen Bergen spoke with us on the Powerful Patient about The Cost of Falling Among Older Adults focusing on the cost and burden to the healthcare system.

Falls affect us all—whether personally or someone we love or care about. Every second of every day an older adult falls. In 2015 alone, more than one in four older adults reported falling and more than 28,000 older adults died as a result of falls—that’s 74 older adults every day.

Our interview with Bharti focuses on prevention, and allows our listeners to learn about simple exercises that can be done by almost everyone using a chair or countertop to aid in stabilizing the body during the exercises. The exercises that Bharti presents can be found online.  Go to www.my-exercise-code.com and enter code AAMN53D in the box on that page.

As a convenience, you can print or download these sharma exercises .

Bharti also recommends you check out this Steadi page at the Center for Disease Control  As Dr. Bergen described in her interview, the CDC has launched a special effort to help reduce the incidence of falling because of their very serious consequences for people’s health.

One Source Rehab in Forest City, North Carolina, is an outpatient rehabilitation provider for Rutherford Regional Health System, a small community hospital in Rutherford County, a primarily rural county in western North Carolina with a population of just over 66 thousand people. Rutherford Regional has an excellent nurse navigator program and is accredited by the Commission on Cancer; it is one of the smallest hospitals in the country with these programs.

Our thanks to Bharti for this important information, and to One Source Rehab and Rutherford Hospital for sharing Bharti’s time and expertise with us all.