"You shouldn't not be able to stand up from a chair without your hands. You shouldn't not be able to get up and down off the floor. Those are all tasks that you should be able to do," explained Lee Health physical therapist Samantha Lovos.
Lovos works specifically with patients 65 and up to help them feel confident doing everyday tasks. "Being able to do dishes or take your laundry out, stand up from the chair or the toilet, these are all tasks that we have to do, and a lot of older adults lose that ability," she explained.
But physical therapy can help patients regain the strength, flexibility, and confidence they need. "You're going to look at the whole body, the whole system, you're going to look at the strength in their legs, you're going to look at vestibular function, and kind of tie it all together and see what they need," Lovos said.
Lovos is specifically trained to work with geriatric patients to help them improve gait, balance, and strength. "Normally as you get older you have more diseases, diabetes, osteoporosis, cardiac issues, congestive heart failure is one of them, so we go pretty in depth on those type of diseases and learn how we need to tailor our interventions to them. As you get older you're on more medications, so we have to learn about those medications and how they affect you and how they could lead to certain symptoms and what we need to do to monitor your vitals," she said.
Teaching patients helpful exercises so they confidently do the things they need to do.
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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries. Lee Health - Caring People. Inspiring Care.
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