What Are Lift Chairs and How Are They Used?

In seniors, the ability to safely stand up on their own is often compounded by diseases like osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, which cause joint pain and discomfort. Often, as a result of these types of rheumatological disorders, many seniors find that they are not able to get out of their sitting chair on their own, especially after having been seated for an extended period of time. To address these issues, lift chairs are one of the most popular types of home medical equipment.

Lift chairs help make it considerably easier for a senior to independently stand or sit. Using a powerful lifting system, the entire lift chair, including its occupant, is raised into the air, which makes it much easier to enter or exit the chair. Instead of having to bend over, the senior is basically able to exit the lift chair on their feet, greatly reducing the likelihood of a fall.

Lift chairs come in all different shapes and sizes, with many different styles to choose from as well. Most are designed to resemble a regular recliner, including having a backrest that reclines and a footrest that extends. However, where a regular recliner relies upon springs and the weight of the user to recline, a lift chair is controlled electronically. This makes the lift chair not only much easier to use, but also a great deal comfortable, as unlike a recliner, simply reaching to get the television remote or otherwise repositioning the body will not cause the backrest to rise.

Operating a Lift Chair

Since most, although certainly not all, of those who use lift chairs are elderly, the hand control used to operate the lift chair is usually very simple and easy to use. The hand control is also directly wired to the lift chair, so that it can not be misplaced and will not require any batteries.

Typically, two position lift chairs and three position lift chairs, will often only have two buttons on them, an up button and a down button.

Pushing the down button will lower the chair, extend the footrest, and lower the backrest in that order. Pushing the up button will raise the backrest, lower the footrest, and then raise the chair. Since there are only two large buttons on the hand control, it makes operating a two position or three position lift chair quite easy.

Infinite position lift chairs, which differ from other lift chairs in that the backrest reclines slightly further and the footrest can be operated separately of the backrest, typically have a few more buttons on the hand control. They will usually have buttons that allow only the backrest to recline or only the footrest to extend, but will also usually have buttons that allow it to be operated in the same manner as that of other lift chairs.