The impact of stroke on daily living activities and the importance of rehabilitation
The activities of daily living are the basics of self-care. After a stroke, routine activities can be a challenge. Tasks oriented towards taking care of one’s own body and enabling basic survival and well-being. Like getting dressed, preparing meals, bathing, doing laundry can become huge obstacles.
As a matter of fact, a stroke can sometimes cause temporary or permanent disabilities, depending on how long the brain lacks blood flow and which part was affected. One of the most common Complications for this is Paralysis or loss of muscle movement. People affected become paralyzed on one side of their body, or lose control of certain muscles, such as those on one side of the face or one arm.
After a stroke, patients may struggle with these activities of daily living, which indicates a critical need for rehabilitation to boost independence.
In fact, Rehabilitation after stroke revolves around the concept of neuroplasticity, which refers to the brain’s ability to reorganize itself based on experience. The most effective way to promote neuroplasticity is through highly repetitive and task-specific practice. This stimulates the brain and reinforces demand for those functions. Thus relearning impaired skills.
Moreover,  Regaining the ability to perform the activities of daily living involves intensive participation in occupational therapy. It’s also imperative for stroke survivors to continue with rehabilitation at home and thanks to advancements in medical science, it’s easier to do it and more efficient. Such as Robotic gloves in the case of post-stroke hand impairment, which provide direct, task-specific applications to the real world, which help individuals prepare for the transition back to everyday life. For this reason, the SIFREHAB-1.0 comes with Activities of daily living (ADL) training mode that will focus on improving mobility through targeted exercises. By working on balance, strengthening the muscles, and detecting the weak conscious hand activity then boost it to complete the intended hand movement.
The Mirror therapy training mode is also helpful in this case. Indeed, in this process, the healthy hand drives the affected hand to move synchronously, activates the mirror neuron, provides the affected hand with an assisted driving force to perform training tasks, and alleviates post-stroke numbness.
Accordingly, many patients with stroke experience difficulty with performing daily living activities that might lead to psychosocial maladjustment due to long-term stress and strain and in this case Rehabilitation with robotic systems offers repetitively practicing exercises and engage individuals in basic self-care tasks which help them regain their normal life routine and significantly improve their quality of life.
