Home is where we can truly relax and be ourselves, and that’s just part of why so many older individuals make the choice to remain at home throughout aging. But in many cases wheelchairs will become a part of life when seniors or those with certain disabilities experience decreased mobility. This can be especially challenging when it comes to ensuring the home is safe. Thankfully, a few home modifications for…
Insights and Tips for Enhancing Care at Home
How to Deal with a Common Challenging Behavior in Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease is a complicated condition that often brings with it overwhelming issues for family caregivers. As the disease continues into later stages, those with Alzheimer’s increasingly communicate through actions as opposed to speech, and quite often these types of behaviors can be inappropriate. For example, a senior with more advanced Alzheimer’s disease might exhibit the following:
Recognizing the Signs of Burnout when Caring for a Loved One with Alzheimer’s
Envision how it would feel to awaken in an unfamiliar place, not being able to remember how you arrived there or even what your name is. Utter disorientation quickly turns into anger and fear, and you might now discover yourself yelling at the stranger positioned by your bed, talking to you in a quiet voice.
De-Prescribing Medications: What Seniors Should Know
With over 1/3 of all 60-year-olds taking five or more prescription medications, it’s no wonder that problems are occurring from overmedication. Polypharmacy, defined as “…when an adverse drug effect is misinterpreted as a new medical problem – leading to the prescribing of more medication to treat the initial drug-induced symptom,” can lead to a variety of additional health risks or worsening of existing health conditions. It’s advised that seniors and…
Safely Dispose of Medications with These Five Tips
With many aging parents taking many different prescriptions, and with health care professionals changing and adding dosages and medications to discover just the right solutions, it’s important to know what to do with prescription drugs that are no longer needed or that have expired. There are a number of options to safely dispose of medications:
The Health Advantages of Senior Socialization
It is intuitive to most of us that senior socialization improves health and wellbeing. It connects seniors to other people’s experiences, beliefs, challenges, humor, opinions, and various other human occurrences. Now, however, scientific studies are confirming seniors socializing with others actually can enhance the wellness of both their minds and bodies.
Music and Dementia: The Connection That Can Help Older Adults
Nowadays, music is more available than ever before. For those who take smartphones or tablets with them everywhere they go, hundreds of thousands – if not tens of millions of tunes – are simply a few touches or finger swipes away. If you are a caregiver for a senior, your smartphone can be one of the most helpful tools in your possession to help tap into the benefits of music….
Finding Work-Life Balance for Family Caregivers
Regardless of whether or not you love your job, the workplace can, at times, be stressful. Now consider how stressful it can be for those who have a second full-time job taking care of an older or disabled family member. For many family caregivers, balancing caregiving and a career can be virtually impossible, along with taking care of a home and family, and caring for an older loved one, which…
Family Caregiver Tips: Practicing Self Care
We plan for our careers. We plan to purchase a home. We plan for a family. However, life often has other plans and throws unanticipated curveballs. Taking care of an aging parent is often not a role most people plan for, and many are unaware of the financial burden, the amount of time required to provide that care, and the emotional toll it can take. Luckily, there are a few…
Making Multiple Sclerosis Patients Comfortable at Home
As Jane Austen once said, “There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” And for someone with a chronic disease, like multiple sclerosis (MS), remaining as comfortable as possible, and, as safe as possible, is essential. Luckily, making multiple sclerosis patients comfortable at home is possible with a few tips and some outside help. If someone you love has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the preliminary step should…