Bungee cords are being used to help injured or sick Albertans make strides in regaining balance and learning how to walk again.

The province says patients are regaining balance and mobility thanks to two new mobility machines at the WestView Health Centre in Stony Plain.

The NeuroGym Bungee Mobility Trainers are body-weight support devices that resemble a walker – and keeps patients steady with a bungee cord waist harness.

“Normally we would have a walker and that’s how we would mobilize someone, which would take a great amount of upper strength when you’re weak and it’s not imitating normal walking,” said physiotherapist Jaymie Wasdal.

“This (bungee machine), you’re free to walk, free to turn, and really with minimal assistance and when someone gets tired, they sit down.”

The machine takes advantage of neuroplasticity, the brain’s natural ability to relearn lost motor skills by forming new neural pathways to compensate for injury or disease, in order to help patients regain balance and learn how to walk again.

“The only way to retrain balance is to lose your balance and then you get permanent changes in the brain and with that the brain can learn from falling and hopefully next tim the balance reaction improves,” Wasdal explains.

The bungee mobility trainers are helping patients with brain or spinal cord injuries, those with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and Parkinson disease.

Patient Lester Steinhauer was weak and bedridden when he arrived at the health centre.

The 57-year-old was prone to falling and suffered from multiple health issues.

Steinhauer credits the bungee mobility trainer for helping him walk again.

“It’s helped improve my walking,” he said. “It controls my legs from falling… I feel safe.”

The mobility machines arrived at the health centre earlier this year.

Wasdal says the machines are a safer way to help patients regain balance.

“When you have someone that is very compromised, very weak from illness or what have you, we can have them in this, they can lose their balance but it will catch them,” Wasdal said.

“It’s a very safe way to mobilize someone.”