The Best Holiday Gifts for Seniors
By Philip Moeller

Welcome to the age of gadgets, where Best Buy has become the new Toys ‘R’ Us. In assembling a gift list for seniors, there are plenty of goodies that either plug into an outlet or require a large intake of batteries. There’s just no way around them. But experts drum home some cardinal rules:

1. Remember who the gift is really for.
2. Make sure the recipient has a use for the gift.
3. Make sure you or another family member can provide real-world tech support for the recipient. Your continued help needs to be part of the gift.
4. Do not saddle the recipient with monthly service charges or other hidden fees for your gift.

"To me the question is, ‘What gift would be personally meaningful to a senior?’" says Dan Cohen, a social worker who looks at technology issues involving older people. "You know, seniors are not pining for another shirt or sweater."

His gift, he explained via e-mail, satisfies an old need with a newer tool:

"One item that will keep them engaged and give them pleasure is the gift of music. The iPod Shuffle is tailor-made for seniors. Once it’s set up, to operate it all one has to do is click-on and click-off. Someone else who is already familiar with iTunes needs to learn what their favorite music is, obtain it, set up the playlist, and load it. If the senior knows how to operate a TV remote, they’ll be able to handle this single-button operation."

…continue reading from news.yahoo.com
 

At Age Advantage, our caregivers can help you and your family with all of your home care needs. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing home care in Orange CA and surrounding areas. Call us at 714-385-2864.

Expert Helps Pick Great Tech Gifts For Seniors

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Technology comes and goes so fast these days (do you still have a Walkman?) it’s hard for anyone to keep up, let alone seniors who aren’t waiting for every new gadget coming down the pike.

But that doesn’t mean seniors can’t trade in those Walkmans for iPods or iPhones!

Elie Gindi, of eldergadget.com, was an in-studio guest on the KCAL 9 News at 2 Wednesday to talk about great tech gifts for the senior (or seniors) on your holiday shopping list.

Eldergadget.com is a tech review site aimed at seniors, aging baby boomers and geek-phobic elders looking to find out what products are easy to use from the ones that a mathematician couldn’t figure out.

…read more from losangeles.cbslocal.com
 

The friendly caregivers at Age Advantage are available to speak to you and your family about all of your home care needs. We are a home care agency providing quality home care in Orange CA and surrounding areas.

Caregiver Tips:  Caregivers and Long-Term Care

By Isabel Fawcett, SPHR

Choose Your Battles Carefully

Some caregivers fly off the handle at nursing home, adult day care or assisted living facility staff. While some caregiver frustration with institutional long-term care and eldercare services may be justified occasionally, not every eldercare situation warrants reactionary caregiver outcomes.

As a former human resources manager and in my non-business life, I’ve seen and heard individuals and families complain about perceived, real, or, sometimes imagined eldercare experiences. Such complaints are filed formally with regulatory oversight agencies and/or internally to the nursing home’s administrator or corporate personnel. Occasionally, caregiver dissatisfaction is hurled at staff, volunteers, and/or publicly aired.

Caregivers and other family members rightfully have a vested interest in the health and long-term care outcomes of our loved ones. In contrast, something’s remiss when some families unload elders into the waiting hands of long-term care staff, never to be seen or heard from again. For caregivers and our elders, either extreme is unhealthy. More often than not, the eldercare reality lies somewhere in the middle.

“Why Hasn’t My Mother Gotten Her Medicines?”

One of my mother’s octogenarian contemporaries was admitted to a nursing home in spite of her objections, which is not unusual based on the onset or eventful progression of some chronic diseases in aging. Prior to the nursing home admission my mother’s friend had been in and out of a couple hospitals. She had multiple surgeries, hip fractures, and extended hospitalizations.

Her prognosis for being able to walk again was slim in spite of extensive rehabilitation and convalescence. Her post-surgical lack of mobility coupled with no provisions for in-home care required nursing home placement for her safety.  After a reasonable period of adjusting to her nursing home residence, Mom’s friend seemed to have adapted well, emotionally and psychologically.

Prior to her hospitalizations, at discharge, and, upon entering the nursing home, Mom’s friend remained mentally alert and vocal, albeit reasonably depressed about her fate.  She remained in touch with her daughter, surviving siblings, and a long-distance friend like me, sharing running commentary on her care, feelings of powerlessness, medical treatment, prognosis, and her new residential environment.

When she told her daughter that the nursing home had failed to administer one of her prescribed medications, her daughter promptly asked nursing staff why her mother had not been given all prescribed medicines. The nurse replied that the caregiver’s mother had been given all prescriptions, and, “…Oh, [by the way], your mother has dementia.”

Had it been my mother, I would not have been pleased with the facility’s (and/or last hospital’s) handling, timing and method of delivery of my relative’s major medical diagnosis. This eldercare scenario is one battle I would have chosen to take on had I been the caregiver.

When to do battle in eldercare is the question? It all depends. What’s your take?

Isabel Fawcett, SPHR
Isabel has been a full-time, stay-at-home caregiver to her 85 year old mother for 2 years, and counting. She is a regular Contributor at ElderCareLink, a blogger and Twitterer. Isabel is an independent human resources consultant and former HR management professional with 20+ years of HR experience, including FMLA, workers’ compensation and the Americans With Disabilities Act. She is a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) certified and last worked for the Office of the Governor in Texas before her most recent eldercare choice.  Isabel also has worked in healthcare as Assistant Director of Volunteers at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City, and Manager of Staffing and Recruitment, Norwalk Hospital, Connecticut. She has also worked at Marriott International Headquarters in HR. Isabel is fully bilingual in English and Spanish and has been a patient care volunteer for the American Red Cross overseas.

If your loved one needs Home care in Orange CA and the surrounding area, please contact the home care counselors at Age Advantage. A home care agency providing professional and affordable care. Call us toll free at 866-995-8681.

Baby Boomers’ Eldercare Wake-up Call

There are approximately 78 million reasons for boomers to jump on the long-term care strategic thinking, planning and executing bandwagon.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau report in 2009, boomers were 78 million strong based on the 2006 census.

The staggering number of aging boomers in America serves as a wake-up call to boomers to start planning for our elder care needs. We’re only more than a decade late. How’s that timeline for urgency, my fellow boomers? Our millennial wake-up call is more urgent if any of the following scenarios are sound bytes from your life.

• Long-Term Care (LTC) Insurance: If you are familiar with LTC insurance, you get an “E,” for effort, as my octogenarian mother occasionally said about a few of her former elementary school students who didn’t quite make the grade in reading, writing, or arithmetic. If you have LTC insurance, you’re barely passing with a C-.  LTC coverage is a sound baby step, though maybe not for everyone.
• Childbearing Profile:  You are single and childless. While having grown children is no guarantee of having at least 1 trustworthy LTC gatekeeper in your golden years, being a parent of an adult child may yield elder care dividends down the road.
• Health:  You have been medically diagnosed with at least one chronic medical condition.
• Family Medical History: You have a family history of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and certain types of cancer and/or diabetes. As is said in Spanish, “¡Ojo!” (Translation: Keep an eye on that!)
• Relationships in Your Family: Some families can’t wait to get as far away from each other as possible as members age. If your family’s relationships are strained, don’t count on family support in your golden years. Some caregivers could tell you stories about dysfunctional family relationships that erupt in nasty feuds when aging family members need long-term assistive care.  Who are your family allies? Do you know? You should. One day in the not too distant future, your daily eldercare may depend on a family member. If that day comes, your primary (family) caregiver should be your elder care advocate.
• Home Upkeep:  If you are a homeowner, you know that appliances and various parts of your home eventually will need repairs. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially, will you be prepared, and able, to keep up with increasing demands of homeownership as you advance in years?
• Family’s Go-To Contact? Your parents are older and/or starting to show signs of age-related or chronic disease health decline. You volunteered, or, Dad asked you for help with mowing the lawn after his heart attack scare. Your sibling who lives closer to your parents than you do has been calling you to vent about “little things” around your aging parents.
• Sibling(s) Lives Closer to Your Elderly Parents: You’ve long assumed that your sibling was merely venting with those telephone calls about your parents. You never gave the conversations a second thought. Your sibling takes care of helping your parents and lives within 15-minutes of your parents’ home.
• Financially Tangled Elder Web: You feel blindsided when you inadvertently discover that your parents have not paid their (property) taxes for more than a year now. Then, you discover unopened and unpaid bills in your parents’ home. How, and when, did your parents’ financial affairs get so out of hand?
• Your Emotional Roller Coaster: You wonder what you may have missed and decide that the whole mess is your sibling’s fault. You had nothing to do with this.  You have no idea what to do, or, where to begin. You have your own life, marriage or divorce, relationship woes, job demands, financial challenges, adult child(ren) who just moved back into your home in a dismal economy, mounting debt, and more drama. You’ll help your parents because no one else in your family seems to care.
• Stress: Your anger mounts. You’re depressed. You stop talking to your sibling(s). You argue with your parents.

You feel so alone.

With 78 million aging boomer cohorts and 65 million caregivers in the U.S., you are part of a supportive community.  Recognizing eldercare’s red flags is one way to achieve confidence that propels you to reach out to healthcare and eldercare professionals for help. Involve your parents and siblings in decisions.

You’re not alone. It’s a family affair.

Isabel Fawcett, SPHR
Isabel has been a full-time, stay-at-home caregiver to her 85 year old mother for 2 years, and counting. She is a regular Contributor at ElderCareLink, a blogger and Twitterer. Isabel is an independent human resources consultant and former HR management professional with 20+ years of HR experience, including FMLA, workers’ compensation and the Americans With Disabilities Act. She is a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) certified and last worked for the Office of the Governor in Texas before her most recent eldercare choice.  Isabel also has worked in healthcare as Assistant Director of Volunteers at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City, and Manager of Staffing and Recruitment, Norwalk Hospital, Connecticut. She has also worked at Marriott International Headquarters in HR. Isabel is fully bilingual in English and Spanish and has been a patient care volunteer for the American Red Cross overseas.

Home care counselors at Age Advantage are available to talk with you and your family about care needs for your loved one, including, how to reduce caregiver stress while providing better, affordable care. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing In Home Care in Orange CA and surrounding areas.

Happy Thanksgiving From Age Advantage!

Please remember to check on your elderly family members.  It’s the perfect time to establish a base line on behavior and make sure they are taking care of themselves. If not, please have discussions and don’t be afraid to ’say what you see’. Let them know your concerns so that these discussions can continue without hard feelings. Let them know they are loved!

 

If you need answers to elder care questions or need help with home care in Orange CA or the surrounding area, please contact Age Advantage at 866-995-8681.

Alzheimer’s Awareness Month Sheds Spotlight on Treatment, Prevention Efforts

November marks the beginning of National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month, a reminder that the number of people who will develop the disease is expected to skyrocket over the next few years.

Starting Jan. 1, 79 million baby boomers will turn 65 at a rate of one every eight seconds.

That is more than four million per year, according to a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times. If scientists could delay onset of the disease by five years, via better drugs, the United States could keep much fewer Alzheimer’s patients from needing nursing homes, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and Alzheimer’s experts Stanley Prusiner and Ken Dychtwald said in the piece.

Currently, for every penny the National Institutes of Health spends on Alzheimer’s research, Americans spend $3.50 caring for individuals with the disease, for a total of $172 billion a year.  At that rate, by 2020, the cumulative total will be $172 billion a year, or $20 trillion by 2050, according to the op-ed titled “The Age of Alzheimer’s.”

…read more from Mcknights.com

For information about how Age Advantage can help your family with home care for a loved one suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, including how to reduce caregiver stress in the Orange CA area, visit www.ageadvantageorange.com/ or call 866-995-8681.

November is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month and we wanted to share this important article from alzinfo.org. As we learn more and more about Alzheimer’s Disease, getting the information out and sharing early warning signs can help everyone from researchers to caregivers better understand this horrible disease.

Friends and Family May Be Best Detectors of Early Alzheimer’s Disease

Family members and friends may be better judges of early Alzheimer’s disease than standard memory tests, a new study reports. The results could help doctors diagnose suspected Alzheimer’s at an earlier stage, when treatment may be more effective and families can better prepare for the changes to come.

The study comes from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where researchers developed a two-minute questionnaire that asked close friends and family members if they have noticed problems with memory or judgment. The survey asked “yes” or “no” questions about whether they have noticed such signs in loved ones as:

• Bad financial choices or other problems in judgment;
• Less interest in hobbies and other favorite activities;
• Repeating questions, stories or statements;
• Trouble learning how to use a tool or appliance, such as a television remote control or a microwave oven;
• Forgetting the month or year;
• Difficulty handling complicated financial affairs, such as balancing a checkbook;
• Difficulty remembering appointments; and
• Consistent problems with thinking and memory.

Survey results were then correlated with so-called biomarkers, like brain changes on brain scans or blood tests results, that are generally regarded as of Alzheimer’s. The survey proved more accurate than standard word and memory tests like the mini-mental state exam, which doctors perform in their offices to look for early signs of Alzheimer’s.

…continue reading from alzinfo.org

Alzheimer’s home care counselors at Age Advantage are available to talk with you and your family about care needs for your loved one, including, how to reduce caregiver stress while providing better, affordable care. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing Alzheimer’s Home Care in Orange CA.

National Family Caregivers Month

Over the next decade approximately 47 million baby boomers in North America are or will be facing the role of caregiver to a parent, relative or elderly friend – an odyssey that will change many of your lives. At the same time countless thousands of seniors face the dilemma of caring for a chronically ill spouse.

A new survey from the National Family Caregivers Association (NFCA) shows that the number of persons who provided care for an elderly, disabled or chronically ill, friend or relative during the past year is more than twice as large as had been previously thought.

Survey results indicate 26.6 percent of the adult population was involved in caregiving during the past 12 months. Based on current census data, that translates to more than 54 million people.

Earlier surveys estimated only an approximated 25 million caregivers in the United States.

Based on a random sample of 1,000 adults, the data reveal the sheer number of family caregivers, and by inference, the significant need for caregiving in America. The NFCA survey, conducted this summer, was sponsored by CareThere.com, a new Web site dedicated to supporting family caregivers.

Source: CelebrateLove

Home care counselors at Age Advantage are available to talk with you and your family about care needs for your loved one, including, how to reduce caregiver stress while providing better, affordable care. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing In Home Care in Orange CA.

I wanted to share this article about depression from the New York Times, New Old Age . Most people don’t recognize symptoms of depression. Depression is very real and can lead to other ailments if not diagnosed. If you have a senior loved one who may be suffering from depression or needs help with home care in Orange CA, please visit www.ageadvantageorange.com for more information.

Depression, Incognito
By PAULA SPAN

Picture this experiment: A group of older adults living independently, most in their 70s and most female, are handed a couple of paragraphs to read. “You are 70,” the first line says.

From there, the story heads in one of two directions. “You have been feeling unusually sad for the last few weeks,” half of the study subjects read. But the others read this: “You don’t seem to be able to enjoy things that you used to, like watching TV and reading the newspaper.”

Both sets of paragraphs go on to describe additional and identical problems: trouble sleeping, feeling tired, losing appetite and weight, a lack of concentration. Neighbors have noticed a change.

When the participants finish reading, an interviewer asks them, “What would you say is wrong, if anything, with the person in the story?”

Fewer than half the participants correctly identified this unhappy 70-year-old as suffering from depression, reports a new study in The Journal of Applied Gerontology. That’s not encouraging — perceiving the problem, of course, is an important factor in seeking or accepting help.

What’s particularly interesting is that the study subjects were more apt to see this fictional person as depressed if he or she were said to suffer the most classic symptom: sadness. “If the person was sad, almost half the respondents knew that the person was depressed,” said Amber Gum, a University of South Florida psychologist and the study’s lead author. When the story instead referred only to a lack of interest in formerly pleasurable activities, only about a third of the participants described the 70-year-old as depressed.

“I’ve had older clients say, ‘I’m not depressed — I’m not sad and crying all the time,’ ” Dr. Gum told me in an interview. But depression in old people can take an unusual form. Though depression with sadness (in psych-speak, dysphoria) remains the most common type, seniors are more likely than younger adults to suffer depression marked by loss of interest, also called anhedonia.

…continue reading from newoldage

Age Advantage 866-995-8681

What To Expect When You’re Getting Older

(ARA) – The signs of aging aren’t always as obvious as a few more wrinkles and grey hairs. The body naturally changes as you get older, but what exactly can you expect and how do you make sure you’re aging in a healthy way?

The experts at Mayo Clinic offer a list of things to look for as you age, and tips on how you can stay healthy:

Heart
As you get older, your heart must work harder to pump the same amount of blood through your body. Your blood vessels may narrow if hardened deposits of fat have formed on your arteries. This can lead to high blood pressure hypertension).

You can help prevent high blood pressure by maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly and reducing your salt intake.

Muscles, joints and bones
Your bones shrink in size and density as you age, which makes you susceptible to fracture. Your muscles and joints also lose some flexibility and strength.

To help your body stay flexible and to keep your bones strong, get the recommended daily amount of vitamin D and calcium and engage in weight-bearing exercises like walking, climbing stairs and light weight training.

Eyes
Experienced eyes have thinner retinas with lenses that are less clear. Focusing on objects close up may become more difficult and you may be sensitive to glaring lights, particularly when driving at night. Common eye conditions include glaucoma and cataracts.

Eat a healthy diet full of fruits, vegetables and whole grains and get regular eye exams to help catch any problems early.

Ears
Hearing loss is one of the most common conditions reported in aging adults. The thickening of eardrums can cause you to have difficulty hearing high frequencies and you may notice an increase in ear wax.

Avoid prolonged exposure to loud noises and wear hearing protection when doing noisy tasks like mowing the lawn. Have your hearing checked regularly.

If you’ve got health concerns or questions about what you can expect as you get older, a great resource to have on hand is the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, 4th edition. You’ll have great information at your fingertips including:

• Preventive screening recommendations and tests to consider based on your age
• Hundreds of pages of fully updated information on diseases and conditions
• How to protect yourself and prepare for flu pandemics
• How to make sense of your symptoms
• A medication guide

Also included is general information designed to help you navigate the changes and health care decisions that come as we get older.

For more information and healthy aging tips, visit MayoClinic.com. To purchase your copy of the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, 4th edition, visit bookstore.MayoClinic.com.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

If you need Elder Care for a loved one in Orange CA, please visit www.ageadvantageorange.com for information on how we can help!