40 Steps to Making a Bed... And Other Lessons in Caregiving By blog One recent morning, a clinical manager who helps train aides at the home care agency where I work, shared with me a lighthearted comment that she'd overheard from one of her newest trainees. "Who knew making a bed was so complex?" the aide had said. That got me thinking -- and counting.
_ What You May Not Know About Preventing Heart Attacks, Strokes, and Diabetes By article By Bradley Bale MD and Amy Doneen ARNP with Lisa Collier Cool Have you ever wondered why someone could feel perfectly fine and then minutes later have a massive heart attack or stroke that either kills the person or causes a life-long disability? Even more challenging is the concept that some people can go in for a full medical exam, including cholesterol and blood pressure check and a stress test, and be told they are fine only to drop dead of a heart attack days or weeks later.
Caregiving Caregiving Challenges: Bathing and Personal Hygiene By article By Diane Blum As Alzheimer’s progresses, poor hygiene can often become more than just an unpleasant issue. It can have medical consequences, such as bacterial infections including UTIs. Gastroenteritis and other health issues can also occur, some quite serious to an immune system weakened as Alzheimer’s progresses.
_ Stretchable Antenna for Wearable Health Monitors By article Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new, stretchable antenna that can be incorporated into wearable technologies such as health monitoring devices to keep track of blood pressure, oxygen in the blood, and pulse rate. The paper is published online in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
Heart Health 5 Common Questions About Sex and Your Heart By Jane Farrell article By Steven Nissen, MD Cleveland Clinic Patients often ask me: Is sex good for your heart? The question seems simple. The answer is complicated, in part because of the limits of what research can tell us. But we do have a strong sense that sex fits in with a heart-healthy lifestyle. Below are answers to five common questions. 1. Is sex exercise?
_ Caregivers and Exercise By Jane Farrell article According to Sherri Snelling, ThirdAge contributor and founder of The Caregiving Club (www.caregivingclub.com), there are 65 million family caregivers in the United States. It’s no surprise that many of them, alone with that emotionally and physically draining task, become depressed. In turn, that can lead to unhealthy lifestyle choices such as failure to exercise, bad eating habits and tobacco and alcohol use.
_ Self-Esteem Helps Avoid Health Problems By Jane Farrell article Having a high level of self-esteem in older adulthood can have a positive effect on physical as well as mental health, new research shows. A study by researchers from Concordia University in Montreal analyzed responses from 147 adults aged 60 and older to measure their self-esteem, stress and symptoms of depression every 24 months over four years. The investigators also measured the levels of cortisol, a hormone that’s released when stress levels are high.
How to Love an Angry Man: Understanding and Helping Your Partner By blog We all get angry at times. When we feel we’re threatened we react with anger. But we know people who get overly angry or their anger causes problems with their relationships at home or at work. I was one of those people. I wrote two books about how it impacted me and how I learned to help myself and my clients: The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship from The Irritable Male Syndrome.
The Secret of Life is One Thing: How to Be Successful at Love and Work By blog After spending his life helping people, the “father” of modern psychology and psychoanalysis made a simple observation: “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” Most of us recognize that when things are going well at home and at work our lives are joyful. If our love life or our work life is stressful, we suffer.
_ Parenting Helping Grown Kids Can Boost Mental Health By article All the negative press about “boomerang kids” aside, helping your adult children in various ways may actually be an antidote to depression as you age. That’s the finding of a team of researchers at Penn State, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan. The results are published in the February 2014 issue of The Gerontologist.
_ Mental & Emotional Health Health-Care Coverage: A Tragic Exception By Jane Farrell article By Michelle Andrews, Kaiser Health News Dealing with the aftermath of a suicide or attempted suicide is stressful enough. But some health plans make a harrowing experience worse by refusing to cover medical costs for injuries that are related to suicide—even though experts say that in many cases such exclusions aren't permitted under federal law. Yet patients or their loved ones often don't realize that.
_ Aging Well Senior Health Stress Management Stress-Free Living Stress Hormone Linked to Frailty By article Low levels of cortisol in the morning and high levels in the evening are associated with declining grip strength and walking speed, which are indications of frailty in older adults. That is the finding of research done at Helmholtz Zentrum München in Neuherberg in Germany and published in the March 2014 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
_ Healthier Broccoli That WonΓÇÖt Spoil Quickly By Jane Farrell article While researching methods to increase the already well-recognized anti-cancer properties of broccoli, researchers at the University of Illinois also found a way to prolong the vegetable's shelf life. An article about the study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, reports that the method is natural and inexpensive.
Aging Well As We Age, Loneliness Is a Major Health Risk By article Feeling extreme loneliness can increase an older person's chances of premature death by 14 percent. That’s the finding of a team of researchers at the University of Chicago led by by John Cacioppo.
6 Little Known Secrets For A Lifetime of Passion and Love By blog Everyone wants a great sex life, but few people know how to achieve that goal and even fewer know how to maintain it in a long-term relationship. Couples try new positions and look for “sexy” things to wear. They try to improve their communication and relationship skills. But to really have a great sex life you have to know the secrets of what it means to be male and female.
_ Heart Health Spousal Supportiveness = Better Heart Health By Jane Farrell article Supportiveness from a spouse can help people fare better in their overall cardiovascular health, according to a new study. The findings, by researchers from the University of Utah, show that when partners perceive the support they get from each other as ambivalent – sometimes helpful, sometimes stressful – their levels of coronary artery calcification (CAC) tend to be high. The findings were published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Mental & Emotional Health Mental Health Care Scarce for Rural Women By article Women living in rural communities are less likely than urban-dwelling women to receive sufficient mental health care, in large part due to limited access to services and societal stigma, according to a study dome at Penn State College of Medicine and published in the journal Mental Health in Family Medicine.
_ Omega-3s and Liver Health By article Oregon State University researchers in Corvallis and collaborators found that omega-3 fatty acids, especially docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), could “be of significant value in the prevention of fatty liver disease”, according to a release from the university.