Stroke Survivor Blog

Increasing blood circulation is important for anyone suffering from stroke, heart disease, P.A.D., diabetes, and a host of other infirmities. The normal way to get your blood circulating better is through exercise, even if it’s just walking while shopping or climbing the stairs at home. However, with a physically disabled person, exercise is almost impossible until now.

A passive exercise machine can increase your circulation while you lay on the floor or on the bed. Passive means that you are not doing the work…the machine is. Although, this doesn’t help the muscles like regular exercise would, it does get the blood circulating. And that’s critical to preventing blood clots from inactivity, or wounds caused by diabetes. The life is in the blood and when the blood can flow freely throughout the body, you’ll feel better and more energetic. This is so important for a stroke survivor who cannot walk like they used to, and especially for my husband, Steve who already has blocked arteries in his heart and leg.

When he was getting hyperbaric oxygen therapy, his technician had him try a passive exercise machine to help increase his blood circulation. After only 15-20 minutes, the pain in Steve’s legs left. This was huge, because the leg pain is his biggest hindrance in recovery. Well, after that one session, I checked into it and read the remarkable testimonials of others who have used this type of therapy. Then I purchased our own passive exercise machine, which is much nicer and has better features than the one Steve’s HBOT technician used. Steve can already feel the increase in blood flow and he has more energy, so we know it’s working.

Consistency in use is important though, and I’m remiss to say that he hasn’t been consistent, because we’ve had a lot of appointments. We have a two-story home with our bedroom on the second floor. Once Steve comes downstairs in the morning, he won’t go back up until bedtime. So if there’s not time in the morning to use the machine on the bed, then he misses that exercise session. Lying on the floor doesn’t work well for him, because it’s so difficult for him to get up off the floor.

Another option is for us is to purchase a special foldable table designed to be used with the passive exercise machine so Steve can use the machine two or more times in a day. That would be ideal, and then I think we would really see some wonderful results in pain relief, improved mobility and change of attitude.