A WAY TO STAY Home Care Yardley Newtown PA

JUST CLICK ON THE CARD TO ENLARGE IT!

One of our great joys is to create cards that celebrate caregiving.   We want the reader to smile and connect for a moment with the notion of how Devon and I see what a Home Care agency does.  Devon is a punster and came up with the title of this card!  The caregivers we work with, and the clients and families we work for, are so full of love.  

We use the “occasion” of the card to make a donation to a non-profit we think is the Bomb.  For Valentine’s Day our donation is to the Alzheimer’s Association of the Delaware Valley. They do such important work and are so encouraging to our team. Among many other things the Association helps us direct our dementia clients to resources in the local area as well as having a 24-hour helpline 800.272.3900.

Home care counselors at A WAY TO STAY Home Care are available to talk with you about your needs.  A WAY TO STAY is a home care agency providing In-Home Care in Yardley

Dr. Suzanne Salamon, associate chief for geriatric clinical programs at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston is just the person to answer questions about seniors. She was recently appointed to the editorial board of Harvard Medical School’s Health Letter and Jane Hass of The Orange County Register interviewed her to get the low-down on topics like “When should someone consult a geriatrician?”  Read  the interview here.

One part of the interview lacks clarity:  Dr. Salamon’s answer to the question “Is memory loss the biggest fear of aging?”   She says, “We probably will see more and more people with this problem (memory loss) and many doctors will say that’s normal with aging.  And lots of time that is true.  

I was rankled by this because it appears that doctors are saying memory loss is a normal part of aging. Let me say loud and clear: dementia is not a normal part of aging.  If you have Alzheimer’s, part of the disease process is memory loss.  The mistaken belief of many Americans is that ALL seniors become senile and forgetful. This contributes to the negative stereotyping of older adults in our culture called ageism which it affects the physical and mental well-being of older adults.

The reality is that a small percentage of older adults develop incapacitating cognitive disorders. At 65, the prevalence of dementia is 5 to 7 percent, with the risk almost doubling every five years of life until age 90, when rates level off to approximately 40 percent (Ficher, Schroppel, & Meller, 1996; Graves et al., 1996; Sadock & Sadock, 2000). 

Some cognitive changes do occur as we grow older. The most common is a decline in speed of mental processing (Ratcliffe & Saxton, 1998).  Age-related change in cognitive processing speed has practical implications. First, seniors can process information about as well as younger adults if given adequate time to absorb the information. Second, since learning new information is stored more slowly into memory by seniors, they may be less able to “store” new material presented rapidly. This process may also be responsible for a slight decline in ability to learn new information in late life. Similarly, it may take seniors longer to recall information. Third, reaction time is slower, which may have implications for performance of activities that require rapid shifts in attentions, such as driving – for some seniors. It is important to note that these changes are minimal in normal aging and do not general impair the daily function of seniors.  

Since normal aging is accompanied by declines in vision and hearing which may be mistaken for cognitive deficits. A senior who cannot hear or see cannot store or recall information accurately. Thus it is important that seniors maximize the comprehension and retention of information by using any glasses, hearing aids, or other assistive devices they need.

The information and citations in the three paragraphs are courtesy of the Society of Certified Senior Advisors (of which I am a member) “Working With Seniors.”  

Home care counselors at A WAY TO STAY Home Care are available to talk with you about your needs.  A WAY TO STAY is a home care agency providing In-Home Care in Yardley Newtown PA

Last week Devon and I were talking about behavior changes one of our clients was experiencing. We wanted to better understand what behaviors occur when dementia damages certain parts of the brain (i.e., hippocampus, parietal lobe). We sought to demystify it for the exhausted family caregiver who is discouraged by the cascade of behaviors that her loved one has been exhibiting. What part of the brain is impaired when someone high steps over shadows or asks repetitive questions? Our hope was that by identifying the parts of the brain linked to these behaviors we could give this family member a “hook” to better understand what was happening to her loved one. At the very least the care team (in this case – the family caregiver, Devon, and our caregiver) would be able to brainstorm and create a supportive environment for our effected client.

There is a ton of complex information scattered across the internet, but we found the Alzheimer’s Society of the United Kingdom has good fact sheets about the Brain and Behavior among a wide range of dementia related topics.

I have added this site to our resource page in addition to the Alzheimer’s Association and Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center – Northwestern University.

Please let us know about other information resources on dementia. Where and how are you getting information about your loved one’s dementia?

Home Care counselors at A WAY TO STAY Home Care are available to talk with you about your needs. A WAY TO STAY is a home care agency providing In-Home Care in Yardley, PA.

The fact that hearing loss is common and untreated in seniors is not news in my world.  

Your Problem - Cory Graham - Carlslife.ca

 I have aging clients, relatives and friends with hearing loss. Each has as many excuses as Doan’s has pills as to why they don’t have hearing aids!  The reality that folks don’t do anything about hearing loss it is highlighted in a recent article by Reuters.  New research states 2/3 of Americans over 70 have some degree of hearing loss; of this number fewer than 1 in 5 use hearing aids.

 What really surprised me in this article are two remarks by Dr. Frank R. Lin, an ear surgeon at Johns Hopkins: 

• Hearing loss has been considered much less important in old people than in kids and adolescents.  His proof:  most U.S. insurance companies don’t cover hearing aids for the elderly, despite doing so for kids.
• Possible linkage of higher rates of dementia to the elderly who are hard of hearing. It’s still unclear, however, whether there’s any cause-effect relationship at work – or whether dementia can be fixed with hearing aids. 

The moral of this story: deal with hearing loss. Make sure your parents can hear because going deaf is, well, horribly isolating. The jury is still out on whether it also induces dementia.

 READ BELOW for common signs of hearing loss courtesy Better Hearing Institute:

 You might have hearing loss if you

Socially:

• require frequent repetition
• have difficulty following conversations involving more than 2 people
• think that other people sound muffled or like they’re mumbling
• have difficulty hearing in noisy situations like conferences, restaurants, malls or crowded meeting rooms
• trouble hearing women and children
• have your radio or TV turned to a high volume
• answer or respond inappropriately in conversations
• having ringing in your ears
• read lips or intently watch people’s faces as they talk to you

Emotionally:

• feel stressed out from straining to hear what others are saying
• feel stressed out from straining to hear what others are saying
• feel embarrassed to meet new people or from misunderstanding what others are saying.
• feel nervous about trying to hear and understand.
• withdraw from social situations that you once enjoyed because of difficulty hearing.

Medically:

• have a family history of hearing loss.
• take medications that can harm the hearing system (ototoxic drugs).
• have diabetes, heart, circulation or thyroid problems.
• have been exposed to very loud sounds over a long period or single exposure to explosive noise

 Home care counselors at A WAY TO STAY Home Care are available to talk with you about your needs.  A WAY TO STAY is a home care agency providing In-Home Care in Yardley

Alzheimer's Association Ad

 Home care counselors at A WAY TO STAY Home Care are available to talk with you about your needs.  A WAY TO STAY is a home care agency providing In-Home Care in Yardley

Here is an article from Sleep Review about a possible sign of Parkinson’s Disease.

A new study shows that a sleep disorder may be a sign of dementia or Parkinson’s disease up to 50 years before the conditions are diagnosed. The research is published in the July 28, 2010, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Using Mayo Clinic records, researchers identified 27 people who experienced rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder for at least 15 years before developing one of three conditions: Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, or multiple system atrophy. Multiple system atrophy is a disorder that causes symptoms similar to those of Parkinson’s disease. People with REM sleep behavior disorder often act out their dreams with violent movements, such as punching, which can injure themselves or bed partners.

The study found that the time between the start of the sleep disorder and the symptoms of the neurologic disorders ranged up to 50 years, with an average span of 25 years. Of the participants, 13 were diagnosed with dementia, 13 others were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and one person was diagnosed with multiple system atrophy.

Continue reading here…

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