5 Best Tips For Using A Cane After Knee Replacement Surgery

Here are the five best tips for using a cane after knee replacement surgery, right after surgery, you might need to be using a walker just like this one, until your balance and strength are good enough to progress to using a cane which offers less support. But this is a lot easier to get around with. Once you’re ready to use a cane, then the first thing you’ll need to do is make sure the heights adjusted properly.

Now when adjusting the cane height, you always want to have that cane about the level of your wrist right here another good measurement point is where your pocket would be about where you’d put your hand in your pocket.

And the reason for that is because once you grab onto the cane, you want to have a slight bend in your elbow, so that you have some push off to your elbow so that you can you’re able to extend your elbow, if it’s too low, then your body is going to naturally want to bend over so that you can get that leverage that point where you can push off.

And that’s not good. You don’t want to be hunched over because as soon as you start to lean forward, your center of gravity is going to be over the front of your feet, maybe even past your feet, which is going to make you at risk for falling. So if you can be standing taller, by having the cane adjusted so that you already have a little bit of an elbow bend, then your balance is going to be best.

The second tip is to use a cane on the correct side. Now, there’s a lot of debate over this, especially with patients because some just have a preference that they like. But the idea, let me share that with you. And then you can make your decision from there. The ideal is to use it opposite of the side that you had your knee replacement on.

So if you look at my legs here, if I had a knee replacement on my right knee, then I would not want to be using the cane on the right side. This is the mistake people often make as they walk, moving the cane along with the leg that was replaced with the knee that was replaced. And so they’re putting pressure on the same side.

But this actually gives you a smaller base of support because the cane is so close to your foot, it’s actually better to use it opposite of the side now you have a wider base of support from where the cane tip touches the ground to your foot and all that space in between.

That gives you a much wider base of support to walk and keep your balance through. It also helps to swing your arms more normally, because when you move your right leg, ideally, your left hand should be swinging forward. And then as you progress your left leg, your right hand is going to swing forward that’s just part of natural motion.

But when you walk this way, you’re also able to distribute the weight evenly between your replaced knee and the cane of course the your arm so that you’re not overloading the pressure on this right leg and overdoing it causing pain, irritation, inflammation, and swelling. So if you can, ideally open up the base of support by using the cane in the opposite side. That’s the best way to use the cane.

But I do have some patients that just want to walk this way, even though it’s technically incorrect. Tip number three is to have more than one canes available because what if your favorite go to cane breaks, you need to have that backup right away because you don’t want to be caught in a situation where you’re off balance having to hold on to walls having to hold on the furniture or the people in order to keep your balance.

So always have that backup cane handy. And you might also want to get different types of canes because some canes have a pointed support like this. Whereas some have a wide base of support. There’s some that have even bigger bases support like this, which is ideal, so that that cane can stand up on its own, and you can let go of it.

Whereas this one will just tip right over. Another feature of certain canes is that they can break down like this ones that you might tuck it away certain situations might require you to keep this small instead of big like this, you can make this small like this one, always consider what kind of terrain you’ll be on.

And if you’re going somewhere that you’re unfamiliar with, or if for instance, if you might encounter stairs, uneven ground like sloped ground, you might want something that’s a bigger base just like this so that you’re sure that you’ll maintain your balance all the time. Tip number four is to upgrade if wobbly.

And if you’re wobbling your balance if you feel like when you put your weight through the cane, it shakes like this, that means that you’re putting too much pressure to the cane. And you might need a cane with a bigger base of support like this one so that if you’re wobbly, it can support you and it’s not going to tip over so easy.

There’s some even bigger bases of support like a quad cane that might be even sturdier for your needs. Then tip number five is don’t settle get stronger. Many people get comfortable with a cane, especially because they feel like they can get around to much greater distances. They can be on their feet for longer.

But the reality is that if you get stronger, your balance will improve. Which means that you’ll need the cane less and less over time. The trouble is that many people don’t know how to get stronger or they have a limiting belief that they’re not able to get stronger because of their age or because people are afraid to push them into strengthening exercises or because there might be pain if you do strengthen.

But the reality is if you find the right way to strengthen in a way that is not painful, in a way that focuses on the weakest muscles to correct muscle imbalances, then it’s possible for you to get stronger.

Even if you’re in your 70s 80s or beyond, you need to look at this problem objectively. If you’re wobbly, if you’re weak, then you’re going to be less balanced. And if you fix the weakness by getting stronger then you should get less wobbly and have better balance, which hopefully reduces the need or completely eliminates the need for a cane at all.

Getting stronger is necessary to reduce the reliance on that cane. I talk extensively about how to get stronger and how to fix muscle imbalances in those that have had knee replacements right here on this channel. In fact, I’ve got a playlist of all our knee replacement help videos, it goes by that title and knee replacement help.

It’s linked down in the description below. I talk about muscle imbalances, how to get certain muscles stronger, how to get out of pain if you’re in a lot of pain right now. And I’ve also got a program called the failed knee replacement recovery program that you can learn more about down in the description too. If you thought this video was helpful for you.

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