Each year tens of thousands of people are injured due to winter conditions and around 9,000 are hospitalized due to slips and falls.

According to the former Chair of the Newfoundland and Labrador Injury Prevention Coalition, Mike Wahl, navigating icy streets and sidewalks can be especially hard for people over 65 years of age.

He says wearing shoes with grips on the bottom is helpful along with salting your driveway regularly.

Wahl explains that one of the easiest ways to fall is when you step out of a parked vehicle and not knowing what the conditions are on foot.

Hospitalization due to a slip or fall can have people off their feet for quite some time. Wahl says those type of injuries affect more than just physical health.

He says it is when people are laid up with an injury and people are immobile is when things like pneumonia can set in.

Muscle mass and flexibility can dictate people’s quality of life and when people lose that a lot of things can be affected like heart health and muscles.