Daily living activities are often the basic skills that are required to care for oneself and meet your physical needs. Some of these physical needs can include activities like eating, dressing, bathing, toileting and mobility. These are the essential activities that every person has to do in order to maintain their health and hygiene. All these daily living activities can be indicators of a person’s functional status.
If you realize that you are struggling with any daily living activity, it can be a sign that your mobility has been restricted. Daily living activities can serve as indications of whether a person is independent, requires minimal assistance or totally dependent on another person for these activities. This classification can help identify which kind of senior living option is more suitable for you.
A decline in your ability to perform these daily living activities can be a sign that there is a medication condition that causes weakness in the body. Keeping active and participating in health and fitness activities will help preserve your mobility. Here are some reasons why daily living activities are important for seniors!
Impacts on the Quality of Life
How functional you are will significantly impact your quality of life. Due to pain or illnesses, older adults may start to lose some of their physical mobility or even their memory. If we fail to realize our growing needs, it can create a cycle of mental and physical health issues. If you do not engage in daily activities, it can lead to issues of malnutrition, isolation and urinary tract infection.
There have been studies that have shown that the inability to engage in daily living activities can lead to an increased risk of mortality. As such, it is important that if you have caregivers, they enable you to do these activities on your own. It is understandable that as caregivers, they would always assist and help you to get dressed, hold you when you walk and help with toileting.
However, although these are great ways to help you, they may actually be stripping away the opportunity for you to be independent. When you become reliant or over-reliant on them, there is no need for you to think or try so hard. Over time, it causes you to lose your ability to think for yourselves or do things on your own.
They may feel that they have to be constantly guided and helped for tasks to be done. Instead of helping you, they are unintentionally disabling you and removing your ability to engage in these daily living activities on your own.
Daily Living Activities Determine the Types of Care
The ability to perform these daily living activities will actually be a good indicator of the kind of care you require. Especially if you are thinking about whether senior living is suitable for you and what kind of senior living option is better for you. Independent living options do not provide any kind of assistance for daily living activities and are suited for older adults that are independent.
