Tag: Senior Living

When your senior is older, you may begin to worry about their progressive decline. The truth is your loved one can have a fulfilling life in their elderly age, but they could unknowingly do some things to age themselves faster. If your senior doesn’t know how to stick to a routine or a healthy lifestyle, this is a chance to hire in-home care, which can help them age gracefully in place. Here are some things your loved one might be doing to cause them to feel older and age themselves faster.

They Keep Smoking

You have heard it once, but it’s time to hear it again. Smoking is bad for your health and will not help you live longer. It will age you faster and harm your body. Smoking impacts your seniors respiratory system and accelerates the aging process by reducing the amount of oxygen that goes to the cells inside your body. If your senior needs help quitting this addictive habit, it’s time to talk to a doctor and rely on in-home care to help your senior fill up their days without thinking about smoking.

Never Wearing SPF

Here is the thing, even if your senior covers up every inch of skin, they are still exposed to the sun’s rays. Senior skin can be sensitive and may burn easier than when they were younger, which can also lead to cancer. The sun may also lead to more wrinkles, and SPF can help stop both of these things. If your senior wants to have nice and healthy skin until they die, they should be covering up with SPF. If they have a hard time with this, it’s something that many in-home care providers would be willing to help with if you find the right one.

Not Sleeping Enough

Even if your loved one’s sleeping habits change, they still need to sleep as many hours as everyone else. They need to get a good night of sleep, and poor sleeping habits can lead to chronic fatigue, which can lead to making them feel older than they actually are. Creating a healthy sleeping routine can take time, but it’s something important to invest in.

Not Drinking Enough Water

Hydration is important no matter what age someone is. When your senior is dehydrated, they may feel sick, tired, and irritable. Long-term dehydration can cause a senior to feel way older than they are, and unfortunately, many seniors forget to drink water throughout the day. In-home care can help by providing glasses of water throughout the day and making sure there are bottles within reach while a senior is doing an activity.

Not Exercising Enough

Even if your loved one is dealing with inflammation, it’s important to manage it by finding low-impact physical activities. When a senior stops moving, it will impact their bodies and make them feel older and less independent. However, it’s crucial for someone to keep moving even when they don’t feel like it, so having a routine is essential, especially when it comes to workouts.

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

As seniors age, there are more challenges facing them than ever before. Aging in place may even feel impossible at times. But with the right help in place from family caregivers and senior home care providers, seniors can take some advice that helps them to be as positive and engaged in life as they can be. All of that can help to boost morale and keep seniors feeling their best.

Exercise and Stay as Active as Possible

Exercise is something that benefits seniors physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Moving more helps to release endorphins, which assist with boosting moods. Exercise can also help seniors to sleep better, feel more energetic, and maintain strength. Seniors who are less physically active than they used to be may find that aging becomes more difficult much more quickly.

Eat Healthy Meals Regularly

Part of keeping a senior positive and engaged with their life means ensuring that their body is fueled properly. What a healthy diet entails can feel impossible for some seniors, especially if they’re not up for cooking, meal planning, and shopping for those foods. Elder care providers can take care of a lot of those tasks for seniors, making it much easier for them to eat meals that support their health needs.

Get Quality Sleep

Sleep does a lot for the body and the brain. When someone isn’t getting enough sleep or is getting poor quality sleep, they’re more likely to experience difficulties with health issues. They’re also more likely to have trouble regulating their moods and generally enjoying life. Finding solutions that help to improve sleep quality is essential.

Maintain Connections with Others

Social interaction is another area that seniors might want to pay extra attention to. Even people who are introverted do need a certain amount of interaction with other people in order to remain healthy. Spending time with family members, friends, and even senior home care providers are great ways to continue to socialize.

Embrace Old and New Interests

Older adults who aren’t actively engaging with hobbies and interests can quickly find themselves becoming bored a lot more often. Embracing both old and new interests opens up so many opportunities to learn new things and to find new things that are fascinating and that they can look forward to each day.

Stay on Top of Health Issues

Focusing on health is something else that seniors have to make sure they’re doing. Attending regular check-ups and following their doctors’ recommendations can be the key to feeling better both physically and emotionally. Senior home care providers can help aging adults to remember their appointments and even assist with transportation if necessary.

Aging brings with it a lot of opportunities for some really big changes that seniors might have been anticipating, like retiring and being more available to family and friends. But there can be pitfalls, too, and staying both positive and engaged in life can help to avoid those. Leaning on help from senior home care providers can make all of this a lot easier.

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

February is Library Lovers Month, and if your elderly family member needs help getting to her local library, elder care providers can help. There are also more online options from the library than ever before, so that is something to look into further. Reading has huge benefits for seniors, and doing so regularly can improve your elderly family member’s quality of life in some big ways.

Reducing Stress

Stress is a huge problem for so many people, even seniors. Reading is a great way to relax and to get lost in other worlds and adventures. It turns out that reading is also a fantastic tool for reducing stress levels quickly. Your elderly family member doesn’t have to read anything fancy or complicated. As long as she’s enjoying what she’s reading, that’s the key to getting the results she wants.

Improving Overall Cognitive Function

Reading regularly helps your elderly family member to maintain and even improve her cognitive function, too. This is especially important if your senior is concerned about brain health now and in the future. Talk to her doctor about her risk factors for brain diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease to determine what else might help.
Improving Memory

It is also possible that your elderly family member can improve her memory when she reads more often. Much of that possible improvement depends on other factors, such as her current brain health. But the brain makes connections as your senior spends more time reading, and she can find that her memory is at least not getting worse if she’s reading more often.

Helping with Sleep Quality

Reading, especially before bed, can be relaxing enough for your senior that she is able to sleep more easily. She may also find that her sleep quality improves, which can be tremendously helpful in reducing stress, improving cognitive health, and managing chronic health issues. If your elderly family member has lots of trouble with sleep, either getting to sleep or staying asleep, she may want to see if there are underlying medical causes.

Offering a Pleasant Way to Spend Time

Finally, reading is just a fun way to spend some time. That alone can greatly improve your senior’s quality of life. If she feels as if she doesn’t have enough time to read books when she wants to do so, it might be time to have some help from elder care professionals. Elder care providers can help your senior with tasks that are becoming more difficult, giving her time to rest and to do things that improve her life, like spend some time reading.

Not everyone enjoys reading, and some people find reading to be difficult because of eye issues, learning disabilities, and other reasons. Exploring solutions like audiobooks or reading to your loved one could help her to enjoy reading in other ways. She may also want to explore other types of books to find something that truly calls to her. All of these ideas are worth trying out for your senior.

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

Whether it’s his changing health or a recent fall that’s impacted his mobility, your dad is struggling to get outside. He loves going outside in his gardens or for walks around the neighborhood, but he just can’t do it on his own.

A VR headset can make it easy for your dad to get outside and explore a new area. He can do this from the safety of his favorite chair. Here are some of the best tools for helping your dad explore a city or country while feeling he’s actually on his feet and exploring.

Alcove

If your dad is more interested in the activity than the area, Alcove is a good choice. He can go on a stroll through a big city or walk up a mountainside. The VR experiences include hot air balloon rides and hikes along a trail.

Ecosphere

The immersive Ecosphere software brings you on virtual treks in Africa, in the ocean to explore a reef, tour Fiji, or into the rainforest. It was created with the help of the World Wildlife Fund.

Gala360

Gala360’s tours are filmed 360 degrees in 6k quality for some of the best visuals you’ll find in a VR tour. Among the offerings is a walking tour of Kyoto, Japan. The software no longer seems to upload new content, but if your dad is new to it, he’ll have plenty to go through as he catches up.

Homestar VR

Instead of exploring a city or site, your dad can stand in a backyard and explore the night sky. He can find different constellations and have help exploring all of the planets, stars, and galaxies in the sky far above him.

National Geographic Explore VR

National Geographic is known for its amazing photography and documentaries. The magazine also offers a VR Explore program that takes you on virtual journeys exploring a historic site or kayaking in the ocean. Have him scale a wall of ice from the safety of his chair.

Wander

Wander is technically a game where your dad picks an avatar and starts exploring by himself or with others. He can stroll through London’s streets, visit the Taj Mahal, or climb the

A VR headset can lead your dad on amazing journeys, but fresh air is best of all. If he can’t walk on his own, it shouldn’t keep him from getting outside. Companion care at home services pair your dad with a caregiver who can stop by each day and accompany him for a walk.

Talk to your dad about the things he hates doing on his own. Ask him if he has any questions to ask a home care agency. Once you have a list of both his and your questions, talk to a specialist in companion care at home to get the answers you need to book services.

Source
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/virtual-reality-and-health

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

How can you tell if your elderly family member might be battling anxiety? Sometimes your senior may not even realize that she’s anxious a lot more than she used to be. If you’re not sure what all is going on with her daily life, senior home care can help you to get a clearer picture of what your aging adult is experiencing daily.

Being More Irritable than Usual

There are a lot of different reasons that your elderly family member might be more irritable than usual, and they can range from health issues to so much more. What matters is that you talk to your senior when you notice that she’s a little more irritable than you’re used to seeing her be. If you can get to the cause, whether it’s a specific situation or something else, that can help you to alleviate what’s making her feel out of sorts. When the cause is anxiety, you want to get to the bottom of what’s contributing to that feeling of being anxious.

Worrying More about Daily Things

Lots of people worry over aspects of daily life. In fact, that’s common for people of all ages. If your elderly family member is showing signs that she’s starting to obsess more about daily concerns, that can be a sign that she’s experiencing a lot more anxiety than usual. Some of the daily worries might be little ones, like whether the doors are locked or if she turned the stove off. Others might be bigger, like worrying that there will be a natural disaster and what might happen if it occurs. If this is new for your elderly family member, you may want to talk with her about what caused these worries to grow.

Behavioral Changes that Are Out of Character

Sometimes anxiety makes your elderly family member change habits or behaviors, occasionally without her realizing it. She might start to have trouble staying asleep at night, for instance. This can cause her to be awake for big chunks of the overnight hours when most people are asleep. Or your elderly family member might start having trouble controlling her appetite, eating too much or too little. These changes can seem small or temporary, but if they’re driven by anxiety, those new habits can be detrimental to your elderly family member’s overall well-being.

Withdrawing and Staying at Home a Lot More than Usual

Your elderly family member’s anxiety may also cause her to withdraw socially. She may find that she rarely wants to leave her home at all and if something does require her to leave, she might experience anxiety that she recognizes. In order to keep those anxious feelings under wraps, she could be withdrawing even more to avoid dealing with the underlying problem.

It’s important that your elderly family member is able to have a safe and happy life on her own terms, and that means getting to the bottom of what’s causing her anxiety. Senior home care professionals can do a lot to help your senior to be safer at home, which can be a big underlying trigger for anxious feelings. Home care can help with anxiety in other ways, too, especially if your elderly family member is finding it more challenging to keep up with daily tasks.

Source
https://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/what-to-know-about-anxiety-in-older-adults

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