Benefit of using a walking stick
Dr Melina Simic, physiotherapy lecturer
People who use a walking stick or a walking cane can benefit greatly by this device. One of the first the biggest benefits is reduction in pain so we tend to reduce the pain, can also help them do their regular activities and physical activity we know reduces in people with knee and hip osteoarthritis and it leads to cardiovascular disease and so on. So, having the ability to do more physical activity can really improve the quality of life in people with knee or hip osteoarthritis.
Using a walking cane can significantly reduce pain in people with osteoarthritis. A recent study showed that after only 60 days of use pain reduced by over the over a third.
Not much research has been done in looking at the benefits of using a cane for people with foot osteoarthritis or ankle osteoarthritis. However, given that it is a load-bearing joint it is likely to benefit from using this device as well in terms of reducing the joint stresses and some of the pain.
Using a walking stick incorrectly
Dr Melina Simic, physiotherapy lecturer
Well, there are many benefits to using a walking cane there is a potential for some people to harm their joints and that is if they are using it incorrectly. So, correct use of a walking cane is using it in the in the opposite side to the painful knee or hip. For instance if you have a painful left knee you should be using the walking stick on the right hand using it on the same side as the diseased knee so if you have painful knee on the left side and using it on the left side that can actually increase the joint stresses in that leg and can lead to more detrimental effect.
Stigma of using a walking stick
Dr Melina Simic, physiotherapy lecturer
Canes are strongly recommended by the leading guidelines for osteoarthritis management one of the things that we've found is that it's not commonly used it's an underutilised intervention, even though we've got proven benefits for their use. One of the reasons many people might not consider using a walking cane is that they associate it with getting old or feeling helpless, but really the benefits of using a walking cane far outweigh this potential stigma, and there is some evidence that if we use a walking cane on a regular basis we could actually delay the osteoarthritis from getting any worse and potentially we could slow down the progression and prevent or delay the joint replacement surgeries that most people end up having. So, using a walking cane will reduce the pain it will improve your ability to do your daily tasks. It will improve the exercise that you can do and be able to do more and most importantly it can actually slow down the progression of osteoarthritis.
