Staying active and engaged throughout the year is crucial for seniors. Learn how seniors can adapt their beloved summer pastimes to the fall season.
Exploring watercolor painting this autumn could open up a new world of creativity and relaxation for you. Learn more about its benefits.
Dehydration is a common, but sadly often underestimated health issue that can affect individuals of any age. But for senior citizens, the impact can be especially severe and also complicated. With the aging process, certain physiological changes occur that can make older adults more vulnerable to the effects of dehydration, which can quickly snowball and lead to serious negative consequences for health.
Many people today find themselves seeking out approaches and practices in their pursuit of good health that may not necessarily be considered to be part of the typical, conventional approach to conventional medical care. According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, these products and practices generally fall into three categories.
Sleep has a profound impact on our health and our daily function. As we age, we might find our sleep patterns changing. For instance, we might wake multiple times in the night, or wake up earlier in the morning than we’re used to. Sometimes, we may feel that our sleep isn’t as deep as it once was.
For most people, living independently is a lifelong goal, regardless of whatever stage of life they happen to be in. Being independent means making all the decisions in your life, such as how you want to live, where you want to retire, and what is most important to you. For many people, getting older means feeling like those decisions will eventually be taken away from you, but the reality is that it doesn’t have to be that way.
The popular TV show The Brady Bunch showed American audiences an idealized version of a perfectly blended family, with six children, two parents, and a housekeeper. Despite the fact that each parent was only genetically related to three of the kids, they functioned as a family and showed us weekly lessons about love and what it means to be a family. But in real life, things don’t always go so smoothly, and one question is what would have happened to Mike and Carol Brady after the six kids moved out, they entered their senior years, and found themselves needing childcare?
Vascular dementia is a general term describing problems with reasoning, planning, judgment, memory, and other thought processes, caused by brain damage from impaired blood flow to the brain. You can develop vascular dementia after a stroke blocks an artery to your brain, but strokes don’t always cause vascular dementia. It can also result from other conditions that damage blood vessels and reduce circulation, depriving your brain of vital oxygen and nutrients.
It is of course difficult to make healthcare decisions for ourselves, especially when it comes to planning on what to do as we begin to wind down and approach the great unknown. But some of us are tasked with making those decisions for the people we care about, when they are for whatever reason unable to do it on their own behalf. Even if your loved one sorted out their advance care planning beforehand, it is likely that it will not cover all possible medical treatments and options. So how can you best advocate for those you care about when they cannot do it for themselves?
When a loved one falls or has trouble rising from bed or a chair, we will of course want to help them. One of the essential talents of a caregiver is to safely move a loved one from surface to another. There are numerous types of transfers, with varying degrees of difficulty depending on aptitude and circumstances.
Volunteering offers a fulfilling way for retired professionals to stay active. Find out how retired professionals can stay engaged in their golden years.
Screens can have an impact on our visual health, especially for senior adults. Learn more about eye strain and how to safeguard your visual health.
With the Summer season in full swing, many of us are making travel plans to get away for a while, either for leisure or to spend time visiting with family and friends. This is a good thing, getaways are important for our physical and our mental health. And traveling offers the change to create lasting memories and create meaningful connections with the people around us. But if you, or one of your loved ones traveling with you, has a current heart condition or a history of heart problems, you may find yourself wondering just what is safe when it comes to journeys by planes, trains, and automobiles. It’s important to be well prepared and informed to ensure a safe journey for everyone involved. Here are some important things to keep in mind as you create your plans for summer travel.
In television and movies, the portrayal of dementia has long been fairly stereotypical. The scene is usually an elderly woman, usually in a nightgown in the middle of the evening, wandering around outside of the home. She will appear lost and distracted, and be unable to recognize her own children when they find her and want to bring her to safety, and may even resist them stubbornly or aggressively.
The experience of loving someone deeply and profoundly, only to one day have to suffer through the loss of them, is something that everyone under the sun is likely to experience at one point or another throughout life. After all, death is the one thing that all of us are certain to go through someday.
More than 5 million people in the United States are living with a diagnosis of dementia. Globally, it is the seventh leading cause of death among all diseases according to the World Health Organization. Societal costs of dementia are estimated at $605 billion per year, and as the population gets older overall, the number of people with dementia is only expected to increase, with estimates of over 7 million Americans living with dementia by 2025, and over 15 million by 2050.
Many people tend to view retiring as though they’re looking at a spreadsheet of finances. They do the math equation of how much money do you have, when do you want to retire, and how much money you’ll need for that, and the answer is to save as much as you need each year to have that amount when you get to the projected retirement age. And then once that question is answered, the goal is ultimately to simply never work again, forever.
Many of us have a collection in one form or another. Perhaps we buy snow globes or refrigerator magnets as souvenirs whenever we go on a trip. Maybe you collect jewelry or other items from a specific time period. You might have binders filled with years of baseball cards, or boxes with bagged and boarded comic books. But while compulsive hoarding may seem similar at first blush, it is a different animal than simply having a collection or two that have gotten out of control.
Arthritis is a painful and debilitating condition that happens to be common among older adults. It has been estimated that at least 92.1 million adults currently living in the United States have either an official diagnosis of arthritis from their healthcare provider, or they report having joint pain and other symptoms that are consistent with a diagnosis of arthritis. While the chronic pain that is associated with arthritis would be a troubling enough issue on its own, arthritis also has a very profound and detrimental effect on the quality of life for those who suffer from it, especially older adults.
Connecting with your grandchildren across the miles might require a little creativity. Learn how you can stay connected during their summer break.
Independent living doesn't mean you're alone. Learn some valuable tips and suggestions to empower seniors like you to live confidently and independently.
It seems that these days, just about everyone has a smartphone in their pocket, which means everyone just about everywhere has a camera on them wherever they go. It’s no wonder that it has become second nature for most people to whip out their phone the moment they see something interesting so they can take a picture or video. But a number of experts have said that relying on our devices to do all the remembering might result in us returning from vacation with actually fewer memories of the sights we saw.
Meditation was earliest depicted on paintings on cave walls that were done between 3500 and 5000 years ago in the Indus Valley located in the Middle East. All throughout history, most major world religions have included some form of meditation in their spiritual practices. Today, various forms of meditation have become a common component of recommendations in western wellness programs.
According to the CDC, roughly one out of every four adults acts as some form of caregiver to someone with a long term illness or disability, in an unpaid or informal capacity. It is projected that by the year 2030, there will be about 71 million adults in the United States aged 65 or older, which means that the need for caregivers can only increase from here.
As the summer approaches, much of the country has been suffering under blistering heat. Record temperatures, heat waves that last for weeks on end, and more have been a reality for much of the population. High temperatures are especially dangerous for older adults, and dehydration is one of the biggest factors in experiencing heat related illness.