Staying Young

November is National Family Caregivers Month

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Take care to give care.Home

That is the theme of the National Family Caregivers Month for November, 2016.  The following post is from caregiveraction.org:

“The first rule of taking care of others: take care of yourself first. Caregiving can be a rewarding experience, but it is also physically and emotionally demanding. The stress of dealing with caregiving responsibilities leads to a higher risk of health issues among the Nation’s 90 million family caregivers. So as a family caregiver, remember to pay attention to your own physical and mental wellness, and get proper rest and nutrition. Only by taking care of yourself can you be strong enough to take care of your loved one. You really do need to ‘take care to give care!’

  • Caregiving can be a stressful job. Most family caregivers say they feel stressed providing care for a loved one. With all of their caregiving responsibilities – from managing medications to arranging doctor appointments to planning meals – caregivers too often put themselves last.
  • The stress of caregiving impacts your own health. One out of five caregivers admit they have sacrificed their own physical health while caring for a loved one. Due to stress, family caregivers have a disproportionate number of health and emotional problems. They are twice as likely to suffer depression and are at increased risk for many other chronic conditions.
  • Proper nutrition helps promote good health. Ensuring that you are getting proper nutrition is key to help maintain your strength, energy and stamina, as well as strengthening your immune system. Maintaining a healthy diet is one of the most powerful things you can do to take care of yourself and keep a positive attitude overall.
  • Ensuring good nutrition for your loved one helps make care easier. As many as half of all older adults are at risk for malnutrition. Good nutrition can help maintain muscle health, support recovery, and reduce risk for re-hospitalization – which may help make your care of a loved one easier.
  • Remember: ‘Rest. Recharge. Respite.’ People think of respite as a luxury, but considering caregivers’ higher risk for health issues from chronic stress, those risks can be a lot costlier than some time away to recharge. The chance to take a breather, the opportunity to re-energize, is vital in order for you to be as good a caregiver tomorrow as you were today.”

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How is your mental health and fitness?

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Older individuals who remain mentally active and who take advantage of opportunities to learn new information seem to be significantly less likely to show signs of mental decline.

How to Keep Your Brain Limber

From Massachusetts General Hospital’s Mind, Mood & Memory

“Here’s some good news for older adults!  A new study suggests that regular mental workouts can do for your gray cells what heart-pounding exercise routines do for your body: increase fitness and restore the vigor of youth.

To determine whether engaging in activities that make demands on the brain can help preserve cognitive vitality, scientists recruited a group of older adults and randomly assigned them to one of two groups.  One group engaged in mentally stimulating, high-challenging activities, spending 15 hours per week for 14 weeks learning quilting or digital photography.  The other group spent an equal amount of time engaged in low-challenge pursuits, such as playing simple games, watching movies or listening to music.  All participants underwent cognitive testing and brain scans to measure brain activity at the beginning and end of the study, and a smaller number of participants were tested again a year later.

According to a paper published October 20, 2015 in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, the high-challenge group showed improved brain performance after participating in the study and upon retesting a year later, scoring higher on measures of memory and increasing in efficiency in brain regions responsible for attention and language processing.”  Read more

Rockers prove you’re never “Too Old to Rock ‘N’ Roll”

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Rolling Stones perform Desert Trip
rollingstone.com

On October 7th, legendary rockers Mick Jagger (73) with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan (75) kicked off a three-day music festival, The Desert Trip, in California. Saturday featured Paul McCartney (74) and Neil Young (70).  Roger Waters (73) from Pink Floyd and The Who (Roger Daltrey, 72 and Pete Townsend, 71) played on Sunday. Rolling Stone magazine writer Steve Appleford reported the “festival’s unprecedented musical summit…is a gathering of historic headliners with rich catalogs of hits and groundbreaking work that has influenced several generations of music-makers. All the players at Desert Trip remain among the top live acts, despite time and age that have left many of their contemporaries behind.”  Read more

“‘Tonight we’re not going to do any age jokes or anything, OK? Welcome to the Palm Springs retirement home for gentle English musicians,’ Jagger joked early on of the fest that has been called ‘Oldchella’ and worse. He was prepared to prove otherwise.”

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Advocate for your health care

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Hands of an older woman in the hospital
khn.org

How to fight for yourself at the hospital – and avoid readmission

by Judith Graham for Kaiser Health News

September 1, 2016

“Everything initially went well with Barbara Charnes’ surgery to fix a troublesome ankle. But after leaving the hospital, the 83-year-old soon found herself in a bad way.

Dazed by a bad response to anesthesia, the Denver resident stopped eating and drinking. Within days, she was dangerously weak, almost entirely immobile and alarmingly apathetic.

‘I didn’t see a way forward; I thought I was going to die, and I was OK with that,’ Charnes remembered, thinking back to that awful time in the spring of 2015.

Her distraught husband didn’t know what to do until a longtime friend — a neurologist — insisted that Charnes return to the hospital.

That’s the kind of situation medical centers are trying hard to prevent. When hospitals readmit aging patients more often than average, they can face stiff government penalties.

But too often institutions don’t take the reality of seniors’ lives adequately into account, making it imperative that patients figure out how to advocate for themselves.”

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Judith GrahamNAVIGATING AGING

Navigating Aging focuses on medical issues and advice associated with aging and end-of-life care, helping America’s 45 million seniors and their families navigate the health care system.

“Get the flu shot, even if you think you don’t need it”

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What’s New for the Flu in 2016Learn what to do about the flu and why people 65 years and older are at greater risk of serious complications from the flu.

Older adults have another option for the vaccine this year

by Emily Gurnon

October 19, 2016

“You probably know that the flu vaccine is a little different each year. Manufacturers alter it to make it as close a ‘match’ to the currently circulating viruses as possible. There are some other changes you should be aware of for the 2016 flu season, too. But the most important thing to know, experts say, is: Get the flu shot, even if you think you don’t need it.

‘The more people that get the vaccine, the better it is for everybody — and in the process, you protect yourself,’ said Dr. Jesse T. Jacob, associate professor of medicine at Emory University and hospital epidemiologist at Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta.

Potentially Deadly

The flu can be a very serious illness, especially for those 65 and over and for children. About 90 percent of flu-related deaths occur in those 65 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Over three decades between 1976-1977 to 2006-2007, the flu and associated illnesses like pneumonia killed between a low of 3,000 and a high of 49,000 people per season, according to the CDC. Exact numbers are not known, because states are not required to report influenza deaths in adults.”

Read more at http://www.nextavenue.org/whats-new-flu-in-2016/

“Bottom line: Don’t risk letting yourself get sick, and don’t be the source of an illness for someone else. Get vaccinated.

To find out which shots are available in your area, go to Vaccine Finder and type in your location.”

Emily Gurnon is Senior Content Editor covering health and caregiving for Next Avenue. She previously spent 20 years as a newspaper reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area and St. Paul.

Common sleep disorders as we age

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Image result for elderly sleep disorders imagesSome of my neighbors and I were discussing the difficulties of getting enough sleep as we age, so I decided to do a little research on common sleep disorders:

In an article titled Sleep Disorders in Older People (Age and Ageing 2002) author Joseph Harbison revealed these key points:

  • Sleep disorders are very common in older people, particularly those living in long-term care, and may be markers for other diseases.
  • Doctors are sometimes unaware of the propensity for commonly used drugs to cause sleep disturbance.  Insomnia is often multifactorial in elderly people.
  • Benzodiazepines should be used to treat insomnia only when it is severe, disabling, or subjecting the individual to extreme distress.  Try non-pharmacological method instead.
  • Circadian rhythm disorders, parasomnias, and sleep related movement disorders are all common amongst older people and are often easily treated.
  • Older people should be warned that they need longer to adjust to long haul flights.

Read the full report and see a table of Commonly Used Drugs Causing Insomnia and Sleep Disturbance

Embracing life after 50

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Becoming an Elder:  The Next Step in a Life of Meaningimages (47)

By Lorie A. Parch

July 26, 2016

“It often seems that our culture neither values the aging or the aged.

Simply put, things aren’t like they were in our grandparents’ era when older folks received a fair amount of respect.. So these days, the idea of becoming an ‘elder’ may not sound like something you’d ever want to do. If so, you’d be missing out on an essential life experience, says Michael Gurian, a counselor and author of the about-to-be-reissued The Wonder of Aging: A New Approach to Embracing Life After Fifty.”

…Gurian thinks that becoming an elder in your circle, or even in a wider community, is extremely important—and not just because it helps others. ‘We want to become elders because a life of meaning now depends on it,’ he says emphatically.”

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Note:  Gurian’s book was re-released in paperback June 7, 2016.