Category: Sleep Disorders

If your elderly family member isn’t getting quality sleep, that affects every part of her life. These ideas might help a little bit.

Routines Really Do Help with a Lot of Issues

Routines may be something your senior has tried to avoid, especially strict routines, but they really can help her with a variety of situations. Sleep in particular is a lot easier to manage when your elderly family member has some solid routines to lean on during the day. Routines help her to know what to expect each day and they also help her to ensure that she’s meeting all of her goals.

Do What You Can to Help Her to Stay Active During the Day

When your elderly family member doesn’t do much during the day, that can lead to boredom, lethargy, and general dissatisfaction with her life. Having a more active role in her day every single day can help her to stay engaged in life and that has a huge payoff. By the time she’s ready for sleep, it’ll be a lot easier for her to ease into sleeping.

Make Sure Her Sleep Environment Supports Good Sleep

Something that’s easy to overlook is your senior’s sleeping environment. If that doesn’t support her ability to sleep, it’s going to interfere with sleep instead. Choosing curtains that help to blocks excess light and even dampen exterior noise can really help. Double check things like the thermostat settings overnight to find the right combination for your senior.

Remove Barriers to Solid Sleep

What else is keeping your senior from sleeping? Some people find it’s difficult to sleep when they’re doing too much. Others find that when the days all blend together, sleep gets more complicated. Having in-home care can help with a lot of these issues. In-home care providers can take over tasks that are keeping your senior too busy, giving her space to actually relax. Elderly care providers can also help your senior to stick to her routine, giving it structure that allows her to orient herself more readily to time of day and even to the day of the week.

Your senior’s sleep concerns can be a lot more complicated than just not going to bed at the right time every day. If she keeps having trouble sleeping, it’s a good idea to reach out to her doctor to see if you can figure out what’s going on.

If you or an aging loved one is considering in-homecare in Eden Prairie, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

If your elderly family member is having trouble sleeping, it’s highly possible there’s more than one contributing factor. Some of the culprits might even be things you wouldn’t have thought would be an issue for her. Here are some of the possible causes of trouble sleeping, and how elderly care can help.

Double Check Her Pain Levels

Pain, especially chronic pain, has a tremendously negative effect on your senior’s quality of life and likely also on her ability to get the sleep that she needs. Sometimes people with chronic pain don’t mention it, simply because it’s always there. If your elderly family member is also dealing with cognitive changes, she may not be able to mention her pain to you. Finding ways to monitor pain can help you to be more helpful to your senior.

Consider Medication Side Effects

Some of the medications that your senior takes can have a huge impact on her ability to sleep well. Medications that make her drowsy likely don’t fall into this category, but others, like blood pressure medications or diuretics can have impacts well into the night even if your senior takes them in the morning. Talk to your senior’s doctor about how her medications affect her sleep so that you can work together to make changes if necessary.

Add Some Magnesium

Magnesium is a mineral present in a variety of common foods, like nuts, bananas, and spinach. The right levels of magnesium allow your senior’s body and nervous system to relax, which can lead to better sleep. It’s also a vital mineral for cardiovascular health.

Increase Physical Activity

Physical activity, even just a little bit, can be really helpful in improving your senior’s ability to get the sleep that she needs. Always check with her doctor about whether exercise is safe for your senior to do and make sure to start out slowly. Gradually she may discover that exercise helps her to fall asleep sooner and to stay asleep throughout the night.

Help Her to Express Her Feelings

Stress has a huge impact on your senior’s ability to sleep well. It might seem like she doesn’t have all that much to be stressed about, but everything from health issues to worrying about family members can plague your senior. Helping her to express and to work through her feelings can help her to manage stress and to feel better able to live the life she wants to live. Activities like journaling and mindfulness can be extremely helpful.

It’s tricky figuring out exactly what’s affecting your senior’s ability to sleep. Having help from elderly care providers can bring someone into your senior’s world who might notice something you didn’t think to check. They can also help your senior to handle a variety of tasks that are becoming more complicated.

If you or an aging loved one is considering elderly care in Plymouth, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.