Although millions of older adults are struggling with the challenges of Alzheimer’s disease, a far greater number of family members are struggling with caring for them. Surprisingly, nearly 75% of family caregivers are managing their senior loved ones’ dementia care needs on their own, with only 26% reaching out for professional care assistance. Unsurprisingly, families…
In some cases, the best lessons in life come through experiencing them firsthand; yet the lessons learned by those who’ve walked an identical course before us is priceless. If you’re providing care for a family member with dementia and feeling a bit weighed down in this uncharted territory, the strategies below will help: A brief break…
The first signs might be so subtle that many people would not even detect that anything is amiss. Mom is extroverted, pleasant, and conversational while visiting close friends and family and while running errands. However those closest to her have begun to pick up on concerns: being forgetful about the soup cooking on the stove,…
The latest Alzheimer’s data is worrying. The disease is currently the sixth leading cause of death, rising above both breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. And even though deaths from other chronic conditions, including cardiovascular illnesses, are decreasing, those from Alzheimer’s have escalated upwards of 100%. The toll the illness takes on family caregivers is…
In marriage, we agree to stick together for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness as well as in health – but what does not come up in our vows to each other is the way to preserve marriage while caregiving as our parents age. Nevertheless, with our life span increasing, it is…
The first, interestingly, is a drug utilized to manage HIV. Scientists have discovered that the genetic blueprint in Alzheimer’s patients is altered as the disease advances, very similar to the genetic shuffling that occurs in individuals with HIV. The idea is that placing a halt on the movement of the specific genes can possibly prevent…
With well over 325 million people residing in the U.S. alone, it is difficult to think that loneliness would be so common. Yet more than half of the elderly live alone, and more than a million of them are likely to be chronically lonely. In reality, about 50% of seniors researched reported that their central…
A Google search for the term “aging” produces topics such as “coping with aging,” “what you can do about aging,” and even “the cure to aging.” The unfavorable connotations to getting old are, unfortunately, so embedded within our society that it is expected that by 2021, we’ll be purchasing over $300 billion in anti-aging products.…
We’ve all known helicopter parents, particularly when a son or daughter goes off to college. The fact is, we might be guilty of hovering a tad too closely ourselves. Discovering that appropriate balance between caring and overstepping our boundaries is not very easy. And now, due to the added number of sandwich generationers providing care…
Do you recall that feeling as a young child once the school bell rang, signifying the conclusion of science and the start of the best part of the day: recess? There was clearly an immense sensation of freedom bounding out onto the playground, leaving behind the stress of school work for a quick period of…