Kayne's are struggling recommended for management overall management of people with the knee or hip osteoarthritis the main reason is that it's able to offload some of the damaging joint stresses that occurs we do our regular walking and activities and so in using the walking stick and it can actually lead to reductions in pain and also can allow people to do their daily activities a little bit easier so this is a walking stick or sometimes referred to as walking cane and it's used quite frequently to for people with joint disease such as osteoarthritis to offload some of their body weight through it as they take a step so the K can be used in various different ways it's it can be used as recreational equipment basically so people can use the walking stick only when they're doing their the regular what daily walks around the parks and so on.
It can also be used constantly so within the house and also outside of the house it really depends on why somebody needs to use a walking stick as to how they're going to use it if people are trying to use it to reduce the joint stresses in their knees or hips it's probably best for them to use it on during their recreational activities but if they need to use it for balance you know to improve their balance they can use it on a more regular basis there are several types of walking canes the most common is a single-point stick or a single-point walking stick just like the one that we showed before there's also 4-point stick available they are not used that commonly and there are also different types of walking aids that people can use so things like hiking poles there are a lot of proven benefits to using a walking cane and unfortunately they don't seem to be the same effect as using a walk hiking pole so hiking poles or have recently become a lot more popular because of their sporting nature unfortunately the load reducing effects haven't been proven with hiking poles and they can actually increase the forces in people with a knee osteoarthritis so I would just be a little bit cautious if I was to choose hiking poles I had knee osteoarthritis there are some people for whom a walking stick might not be appropriate and those are predominantly people who might have troubles or some sort of injuries to their upper limb so their arms or their hands or their elbows and they might not be able to place appropriate weight through the handle people who also have trouble coordinating the movement might have difficulty in achieving the same load reducing benefits to the knees and hips and feet and also people who have generalized widespread arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis might have difficulty using the walking stick to offload so for people with rheumatoid arthritis they can also use this walking cane but they might need to see an occupational therapist to get a specially designed handle so that they can actually place adequate forces through it 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.