For many caregivers, the idea of receiving a solid eight hours of sleep on a given night sounds like a wonderful pipe dream. After all, it’s difficult for people who don’t have the added concern of providing care to a senior loved one to get eight hours in each night, so what chance would they have? While prioritizing sleep as a caregiver can be a hard row to hoe, it should be a priority for any elder care plan. After all, the better the health and mindset of the caregiver, the better the care provided will be.
According to a 2022 report by the Alzheimer’s Association, there are 6.5 million people in the United States living with some stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Among people aged 65 and older, more than 10% of them have Alzheimer’s, or another type of dementia such as frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body dementia, vascular dementia, or one or more other types of dementia in various combinations.
Summer is almost upon us all and with the warm, sunny season comes the natural and understandable desire to get outside the house and be active. Golfing, gardening, swimming, and more, there’s plenty of excuses one can take to get outside and take in some sun.
Many of us know that vitamin D is an important vitamin that we get from the sun and from fortified foods, but not as many of us know what it actually does for our bodies, and what happens to us if there’s a deficiency of it in our bodies. For example, your body needs vitamin D in order to absorb calcium, which means that vitamin D is essential for maintaining strong bones and teeth. For seniors, who have the highest incidence rates of bone deterioration and tooth decay, this makes maintaining adequate levels of vitamin D of critical importance.
Sadly, financial abuse and scams targeting seniors is on the rise. The Federal Trade Commission reports that older adults and seniors lose more money to scammers than people in younger cohorts. The average senior over age 80 lost $1,700 to scams and cons, compared to just $188 lost by people aged 19 or younger, according to the FTC.
We carry our skin around every day, but oftentimes we neglect it and don’t think about it until irritation or injury occurs. Our skin is a fragile layer of tissue that surrounds us, and is actually the human body’s largest organ. Skin is made up of water, protein, fats, and minerals, and serves many vital functions like protecting us against germs and regulating body temperature. Like all parts of our body, skin changes with age. Over the course of our lifetimes, skin is susceptible to scratches, tears, cuts, burns, infections, and diseases.
Maintaining strong bones as we age will reduce the risk of osteoporosis. Every year in the United States, close to 1.5 million fractures are caused by osteoporosis, a condition affecting seniors especially where bones become weak and brittle.
Many seniors struggle with a poor diet, something that sadly goes overlooked by friends and family members. Older adults may have qualms about leaving the house, especially given the risk of the coronavirus that remains ever-present.
Any one of us can easily lose track of time, forget the date, not know what specific day of the week it is, or even find ourselves unsure of exactly where we are. When we go about our lives and find ourselves getting lost in the daily business of existence, it is normal to find ourselves a little disoriented here and there.
In 1963, when Older Americans Month was established, only 17 million living Americans had reached their 65th birthday. About a third of them lived in poverty, and there were few programs available to meet their needs. There was a growing concern and interest in older Americans, which prompted a meeting between then-President John F. Kennedy and members of the National Council of Senior Citizens. This meeting led to the designation of May as “Senior Citizens Month”, then the precursor to “Older Americans Month”
Earth Day 2022 may have already come and gone, but caring for the environment and being responsible stewards of our planet and resources is a year round job. The first Earth Day was celebrated over 50 years ago, in 1970. The holiday was, at the time, created to bring attention to the dangers of the far too common smog that was choking our major cities at the time. Since then, it has evolved into a much larger movement, one meant to bring forth the most pressing issues facing us and our environment, raising consciousness of them and what can be done.
As humans, we are social creatures, and one of the most important parts of our lives is the connections and bonds we share with others. Difficulty in communicating can be frustrating, and leave people feeling isolated and angry. For the more than two million Americans living with aphasia, a communication disorder caused by brain injury, infection, or neurological disorder, difficult communication is sadly the norm. Seniors who suffer from dementia, Parkinson’s, or other diseases, or who have experienced a stroke or a traumatic brain injury may develop aphasia. Aphasia does not affect intelligence or understanding, but rather the ability to produce and process language, both written and spoken.
Volunteering is a wonderful way for older adults to stay active and engaged in their communities, staying social and doing the activities they enjoy the most.
When we look around, what we see is actually light stimuli reflected off everything around us, entering our eyes and being converted into usable information by the brain.
When penicillin was invented in 1928, it was a turning point in medical history and was the beginning of the modern era where physicians could actually cure deadly infections.
While retirement is, for many of us, the ultimate goal we spend our adult lives working towards, for many people, they find once they’ve reached it, they have no idea what to do.
It doesn’t take an advanced degree to realize and understand that not getting enough food can lead to many different health issues. Everything our bodies do and make and provide comes more or less directly from the food we eat. Living without taking in the proper nutrition is like trying to run a car empty of oil or gasoline. Eventually you’ll be headed for a breakdown.
The human brain is an incredibly complex organ, so much so that every year researchers and doctors learn more and more about it. How we process information, making sense of dreams, associating experiences to memories, brains are an endless source of mystery and possibility.
While our feet are relatively small parts of our body when compared to the rest of it, foot health is an important part of our overall health. Notably, feet are our basic form of transportation, getting us to where we need to go. Even with cars, we have to first walk to the car, use our feet to operate the pedals, and then walk to our destination once the car is parked.
Declaring our goals is an easy task, but oftentimes we find ourselves within a week having slipped back into our old habits, or not having made any progress in achieving the new goal. It can be hard to take the leap from setting a goal to actually accomplishing it. If you find yourself unable to apply yourself to your goals, SMART goals might be the tool you need.
Fracturing a bone is, sadly, a very common experience among older adults. As many as one fourth of men and half of women over the age of 50 will experience a fracture in their lifetime, so if you’ve suffered a broken bone as a result of a fall or other trauma, you’re not alone.
Most of us understand the definition of the word frail, and often we find ourselves using it to describe older adults we might see shuffling slowly, using a cane or walker, or suffering from vision and hearing impairments.
This March happens to be the second anniversary of when COVID-19 was officially declared to be a pandemic. The amount of huge, impactful changes to our daily lives and society as a whole have been impossible to miss, and one of the consequences of it all has been a drastically increased rate of people reporting sleep problems, especially for those of us in the senior citizen demographic. While there are myriad reasons one may be suffering from a lack of quality, restful sleep, here are some possible culprits.
Aging can sometimes be a lot to deal with, and even the most independent seniors don’t truly do it one hundred percent alone. Every task, no matter how small it may seem, when taken together as a whole can become overwhelming and leave you feeling exhausted.