Goal setting is a universal concept, and seniors should not be excluded from it. With the right approach, seniors can benefit immensely from being part of the goal-setting process.
Chances are pretty high that if you’re an older adult, you’ve had to cope with the loss of at least one person who was close to you. It may be the loss of a parent, the death of a spouse, or the loss of one or more dear friends. Our lives are full of significant events, from graduations, to honeymoons, to any given night full of joy and laughter, each one leaves an indelible mark on our lives and the absence of a loved one can lead to feeling profound sadness, grief, and loneliness. The loved ones around us provide us with a sense of purpose and belonging, and without them, those feelings can be much harder to find.
We all find ourselves feeling blue from time to time, but for seniors, that cheerful smile may be more difficult to bring out of ourselves than it used to be. Our senior years will be filled with many changes, and not all of them will be pleasant. Loss of family and loved ones, declining mobility and functionality, and loneliness are all common for older adults.
We have all, throughout our entire lives, had moments where we find ourselves walking out of the grocery store and being unsure of which section of the parking lot we left our car parked in. Or setting down our keys or wallet and then immediately after, being unable to remember where we had just set them down. These are examples of memory loss that every adult, aging or not, experiences from time to time. While these incidents of memory loss are annoying, they are perfectly normal to experience.
Although there are many different causes and types of dementia, one thing they all have in common is that they get worse over time. Advanced dementia refers to the final stage of the disease. For everyone, this final stage comes at a different time.
According to Alzheimer’s Disease International, someone in the world develops dementia approximately every three seconds. By the year 2030, there will be an estimated 78 million people in the world living with dementia, with that number expected to double every twenty years thereafter. With statistics like that, you may find yourself wondering what steps you can take to increase your odds of living a long life of good cognitive health.
The wintertime is a wonderful time of the year to gather with friends and family and enjoy time together, sharing company, stories, and meals to avoid the dark and the cold outdoors. But it can also be a time for many where they feel an increased sense of sadness, possibly even leading to depression. Whether it’s missing a loved one or feeling sad and isolated from being cooped up inside, many older adults are susceptible to suffering from the “winter blues”.
Climate change has had many impacts on our planet, such as rising sea levels, an increase of extreme weather events, and disruption to ecosystems, all of which are well documented. These hazards are of course not good for anyone, but for older adults, they can be especially dangerous as with old age comes an increase in vulnerability to intense and frequent climate related events.
If you are the caregiver for an older adult with dementia, one issue you may have is difficulty in getting them to sleep. While it isn’t always easy to pinpoint the cause of insomnia in seniors with dementia, it can be exhausting to both the caregiver and the senior in question.
Discover nutritious senior-friendly holiday meal ideas designed to meet the specific dietary needs of seniors without compromising on flavor.
Hydration is crucial for seniors during winter. Learn four essential tips to stay properly hydrated and maintain optimal health during this time.
As we age and move into our retirement years, we’re bound to be more focused on our health, which often means prescription medications, vitamins, and supplements. Effectively managing our medications will help ensure that the intended effect is achieved for treating our symptoms or health conditions. It’s also an important way to protect our health and safety, given that over or under dosing on medications can have dangerous consequences. Following the tips and best practices for safe medication management will help you to avoid some of the most common medication mistakes for older adults.
Building interpersonal relationships and staying active socially are both very important things for our health at every stage of life. The people we choose to spend time with will naturally be a large part of our lives, and these relationships can have significantly positive impacts on our overall health. What this means is that staying socially active is incredibly important, especially during our senior years.
The holiday season is one of the most culturally important times of the year in our society, recalling classic tunes like “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” or “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”, or many other numerous holiday standards that get played on repeat making us all familiar with them. These songs all paint a rosy portrait of holidays filled with joy and festivities, but for many people, the reality of the season isn’t a match with the cheerful portrayal. The expectations and the logistics of managing the holidays can be a major cause of stress for even the hardest and most resilient of us. And while the holidays can be a major emotional challenge at any age, for older adults it can be new territory that triggers an unpleasant and urgent stress response.
Everyone feels blue or down in the dumps from time to time, but for seniors, you may be working to muster up a smile or shake off the blahs more often than you may have used to. This may be unpleasant, but it’s not necessarily unusual. Our senior years are bound to be filled with lots of changes, and not all of them are going to be welcome. Loss of loved ones, declining health and mobility, and loneliness are all common complaints among seniors. But fortunately, there are many natural ways and things you can do to boost your mood and enhance your enjoyment of life.
If you live hundreds, or possibly even thousands of miles away from your loved ones, you may find yourself wondering how you can best go about caring for your elderly parents when they need a little bit of extra care and support. While long distance caregiving certainly isn’t without its challenges and difficulties, many families are able to discover that it can all be accomplished with great amounts of success.
Body Mass Indexes that fall into either the overweight or obese category have been increasing steadily over the past few decades, reaching the point that being overweight or obese has reached epidemic numbers worldwide. Adults over the age of sixty now account for about one-third of the obese population.
There are several vitamins that can help to prevent and heal bruises, as well as many different minerals, enzymes, and flavonoids. Many of these should be readily available in the form of supplements at most grocery stores, pharmacies, health-food stores, and they can also be added to your diet through dietary sources. That is, to say, in the foods you consume.
Learn helpful tips and resources on how to find hospice care that welcomes and supports seniors with pets.
Reviving Thanksgiving traditions with seniors fosters a sense of belonging. Discover ideas and activities to make this holiday special for older adults.
Fraud is a growth industry online, very much alive and well and seemingly omnipresent on the internet. It gets shown to us in ads, gets sent directly to our email inboxes, and comes up sometimes when a stranger contacts us on social media. Many fraudsters and con artists also tend to regard seniors as easy marks for a quick buck. According to research and data, seniors are indeed more likely to fall victim to online scams, with a 47% increase of fraud and identity theft involving seniors between 2019 and 2020.
As far as diseases and conditions that older adults can suffer from, it’s hard to name something more damaging and with more serious consequences than osteoporosis. While bone pain, falls, and fractures are common effects and on their own bad enough, the loss of bone strength has negative effects on all facets of life. For elderly adults who suffer a bone fracture, it can quickly lead to loss of mobility, loss of independence, and an early death due to the way health can rapidly degrade as a result.
The prospect of making an appointment with the doctor is not something many people look forward to doing. If you feel well overall, and consider yourself to be a healthy person, it’s easy to let yourself think you can go without seeing the doctor until you notice a change in your health or well-being. The frequency with which to see the doctor when you feel healthy is a question often debated by adults. For those of us who suffer from “white coat syndrome”, which refers to the anxiety that can be felt during doctor’s appointments, this is especially true. For many people, the anxiety felt during an appointment can be enough to cause a rapid rise in blood pressure.
While it is true that muscle mass begin to decline once we reach our early forties, and that by our eighties it’s not uncommon to have lost fifty percent or more of our muscle mass, there are steps that can be taken to prevent this. Even under the circumstances of “healthy aging”, there is still a progressive decline in skeletal muscle quality.
The strain of working together to make decisions about a parent’s care can strain even the closest families. Watching the health of your loved ones decline is always going to be tough. What complicates matters is that caregiving responsibilities are often not split equally between siblings, which can alone cause conflict.