Snow is expected (at press) for the weekend ahead, and while Greater Vancouver weather forecasts are more like speculations than probabilities, it’s a good idea to be prepared. When it comes to health and wellness those preparations involve a heightened awareness of the increased risk of injury. Below is a breakdown of what you can watch out for to ensure your jaunt through winter wonderland doesn’t land you in a clinic with an acute injury.
4 Common Injury-Causing Events to Prepare for When the Forecast Calls for Heavy Snow
Slips and Falls While Walking
This is certainly the most common one, with snowfall leading to slips and falls on the home-front, sidewalks, and parking lots throughout your community. While icing and shoveling your walkways (more on this below) and wearing footwear with better traction will make a difference, physiotherapy deliver preventative measures too. How? View the three ways physio can help keep you from slipping on ice and snow.
Shoveling (and icing for) Snow
You shovel your walkways to keep your household’s occupants, guests, and Amazon delivery-persons safe, but did you know that this activity can lead to injury? The way you bend, move, and lift during the act of shoveling snow presents a number of risks to your muscles, ligaments, tissues and tendons, especially if there are underlying injuries that you don’t even know about. View our guide to preventing (or aggravating) injury when shoveling snow.
Snow Sports
When “snow day” arrives Greater Vancouverites drop everything and head outdoors to play, hitting the snowboarding slopes and ski hills that surround the inland side of our municipalities. It’s for this reason within a day or two of snowfall hospital ERs, drop-in clinics, and physical therapy facilities receive of a wave of patients who have sustained an injury after participating in snow sports. The injuries range from concussions and those to the back, hand/wrist, knee, and ankle. View more about the injuries that you need to watch out for when playing winter sports.
Driving
Many Burnaby and Greater Vancouver residents avoid getting behind the wheel when it snows. It’s a running joke among our eastern and northern neighbors that we don’t quite perform that well on the roads when there is even the lightest blanketing of the white stuff. But the risk of motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) inflates for even the most seasoned of winter drivers. While installing snow tires is the first step to MVA prevention during the season, making a few changes to your biomechanics can make a difference too. Here are the 5 ways physio can improve your driving experience and keep you safer.