Walking Aids
Walking aids include assistive canes (commonly referred to as walking sticks), crutches and walkers. As appropriate to the needs of the individual user, these devices help to maintain upright ambulation by providing any or all of: improved stability, reduced lower-limb loading and generating movement.
- Improved stability
- By providing additional points of contact the walking aid provides both additional support and a wider range of stable centre of gravity positioning.
- Reduced lower-limb loading
- By directing load through the arms and the walking aid, lower impact and static forces are transmitted through the affected limbs.
- Generating Movement
- The walking aid and arms can substitute for the muscles and joints of the spine, pelvis and/or legs in the generation of dynamic forces during walking.
Read more about this topic: Mobility Aids
Famous quotes containing the words walking and/or aids:
“The walking of girls’ vulnerable feet,
The heart in its own endless silence kneeling.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone to count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)