Archive for the ‘Living’ Category
Adjusting to Assisted Living
The move to assisted living is almost always a difficult time in an elderly person’s life. More often than not, it’s just as hard on that person’s children, who are charged with making the decision in the first place. Still, there comes a time in all of our lives – provided we live long enough, of course – when moving to a retirement home can remove a serious burden from the shoulders of all concerned.
Before moving into a senior retirement living home, you’ll need to decide which personal items should come with you. Small pieces of furniture, keepsakes and personal photographs are perhaps the most important considerations. It’s also critical that you check out your new home well ahead of time as this will help assist with the adjustment process. Otherwise you’ll go in cold and feel uncomfortable with your new surroundings.
Senior Living: Beyond the Stigma
Senior living facilities are often branded with an unfair stigma. For some people, these places bring to mind images of sadness, confusion and imminent death. But assisted living should not be confused with hospice care, where the end is already in sight. Many aging individuals live for years in happiness and fulfillment at senior care homes. In my mother’s case, the transition was touchy but ultimately it felt like the correct decision.
My mom owned her own home well into her 70s and remained energetic and independent. She kept busy with a variety of hobbies including bird-watching and a local pinochle club. But at a certain point the burden of shoveling her own walk and raking her own leaves became too much to bear. We helped her move to a senior apartment complex where those inconveniences no longer weighed on her mind.
Keep Your Muscles after 65!
- Image via Wikipedia
As adults grow older they lose the muscles that they had when they were younger, because their muscles shrink. Previous research has shown that seniors are less efficient at building muscle from food compared with the way they did when they were younger. Smaller, weaker muscles means less strength, but they also increase the probability of falling injuries that have a very negative impact on senior living. If that were not bad enough, recent research in England at the University of Nottingham has discovered more bad news that hinders seniors’ muscle building efforts. It turns out that the mechanism that blocks the breakdown of muscles does not work very effectively in folks over 65 years of age.
This discovery was made during a comparison study between 25-year-olds and folks in their late 60′s. The young people’s muscles were able to stop the muscle breakdown and the older folks’ muscles were not. The researchers also discovered that the older folks had a lower blood flow in their legs than the younger folks. One conclusion that the researchers drew from this finding was that the rate at which nutrients and hormones are supplied is lower for the older folks which may explain the cause of the declining muscles. The researchers performed a follow-up study in which the older folks performed at least three exercise sessions a week for 20 weeks. Instituting this weight training exercise for seniors was enough to increase the blood flow to the legs of the seniors until it was identical to the younger group. By increasing the blood flow to the legs of the seniors their muscle wasting was reversed.
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Eat Your Broccoli!
Broccoli isn’t just a good green vegetable among the many red, yellow and green vegetables. It turns out that it can apparently have a positive effect in modifying the pathways in the body that lead to inflamation and carcinogens, particularly in the prostate. Researchers in the UK have reported that by incorporating broccoli in their diet that men over 55 showed a reduced risk for
prostate cancer. The men were chosen for the test, because they already had markers for the pre-invasive stage of that cancer.
Two groups were studied under the condition that half were fed a broccoli rich diet and the other half were given a control diet. The researchers hypothsize that some of the chemicals found in the cruciferous vegetable broccoli produce changes in the bloodstream that discourage the promotion of cancer growth. This is good news for men 55 years of age and older, because they can start incorporating broccoli into their diet as a preemptive aging measure against developing prostate cancer.
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When Is It Time to Move to Assisted Living?
Making the decision to move into an assisted living community can be one of the most difficult and emotionally tricky situations your parents or elderly relatives will face. Especially if they are adamant about their independence, this move can be particularly hard. If they are physically unable to adequately care for themselves, however, the decision is really pretty cut and dry. Even if they are averse to the idea, it’s truly in their best interest to get some external and professional help with their living situation.
After all, seniors don’t have to move into senior living communities. Rather, they can simply have somebody that provides assistance and help in their own home. For many people, this is a comforting proposition. But if fulltime care is needed, this might not be sufficient, as the nurse or helper can’t be there every minute of the day. Also, assisted living offers people the chance to interact and befriend others. This interaction can drastically improve one’s quality of life. Ultimately, however, the decision to move is up to the individual and his or her family.