Aging 101
Aging. We all do it. And we all do it differently. Let’s start with the very basics – you can spell it ‘aging’, or ‘ageing’ – either way it’s something you’re doing right this second! Every single reaction going off in every single cell in your body every micro second makes you a little wee bit older. Every single time you put food or beverage in your mouth, or every time you choose to be active or not, you’re making a choice about how you want to age. Let’s look at the major components of intelligent aging. In my mind the three primary pieces of...
Read MoreDeclining incomes of BC Seniors
Last month I wrote about the recent annual report released from the Office of the BC Seniors Advocate that painted a somewhat bleak picture about the resources available from the public system (government) in seniors care. Now, on the heels of that annual report, comes a new report this week also from the office of the BC Seniors Advocate expressing concern about the declining incomes of BC Seniors. And this problem is particularly acute to seniors in BC compared to other parts of the country. For instance, since 2013 BC senior families saw their annual median income fall 5.7%. For a BC...
Read MoreSeniors Care Falling Behind.
The BC Seniors Advocate holds an important role in supporting our province’s seniors and through close communication with seniors and key stakeholders in BC senior care/supports, compiling information, making recommendations, and initiating action on key items. Just this month the Seniors Advocate for BC, Isobel Mackenzie, released her annual report which detailed the current state of senior care and seniors housing in BC, amongst other important issues facing seniors in BC as well. Out of interest, some of the key highlights from the report are summarized below….see if you can spot...
Read MoreEven Caring Has a Limit
With the daily demands life puts on us, it is stressful to provide comprehensive daily care to elderly parents when one or both parents are not as independent anymore. It’s usually the daughter caring for her elderly mother or father. The family caregiver can become mentally and physically exhausted, irritable and resentful. Just like our own pool of physical energy, the mental energy required to provide care to loved one has a limit. When it becomes very stressful to see a loved one struggling with independence, sometimes with high demands – at the end of the day it can be...
Read MoreOpportunity Knocks
I recently presented on my 7 Pillars of Happiness to a wonderful group of South Cowichan seniors. We all had a great time discussing happiness and why it’s important to think about and practice it (but NOT chase it!) at any age. And I made a new friend at this presentation too. Terry. Great fellow! From the moment I arrived and sat down (beside Terry), he seemed like such an easy person to talk to. It was as if I was supposed to sit next to Terry. We started to connect immediately. Terry shared a couple of stories about his career and how he was drawn to educating and helping others. We all...
Read MoreAge Intelligently
Warmland Community Policing put on a successful Seniors Safety Fair event this past week at the Island Savings Centre in Duncan. Representatives from various seniors programs and services were represented. Nurse Next Door was there with friends from our seniors services network – our ‘Intelligent Aging’ group. One of the fun ideas was a passport to visit each of the booths, where the passport required an answer to a pre-selected question. Our Intelligent Aging group chose an important question – ‘How do you age intelligently?’ If I were to ask you that right now, how would you...
Read MoreControlling Your Own Happiness
In our last column, The Relationship to Happiness, we wrote about the main contributing factors to happiness, from an “interests” point of view, and how we use these factors to support a happier experience for our senior home care and home support clients. This month, we’d like to focus on what scientific research suggests controls our happiness from inside. This information comes from a relatively new and modern branch of psychology, called ‘positive psychology’, which uses scientific research and intervention to aid in the achievement of a satisfactory life – rather than...
Read MoreThe Relationship To Happiness
We love making our senior clients happier! One of the main reasons that we offer home care and home support to seniors is to keep seniors healthy and happy where they want to be – at home! But it’s more than just supporting their goal of aging at home. Outside of the basics like living conditions, safety and health, there are some additional components indicated in modern literature as cornerstone pieces for happiness. Among the most prominent are growth and learning, practicing gratitude, travel and adventure, and relationships. Growth and learning are ever popular, even somewhat trendy....
Read MoreSexuality and Aging
I see so much in magazines and online about the linkages between aging and sexuality that I feel compelled to write about it. But it’s my first attempt, so forgive me if I’m not very good at it. Remember when sexuality was thought to become extinct as we age? Well, that’s done. The Baby Boomer generation is once again changing the face of aging through another sexual revolution. Check this out … a National Council on Aging survey reports that among people age 60 and over who have regular intercourse, 74 percent of the men and 70 percent of the women find their sex lives more...
Read More‘Younger’ Is A State Of Mind
I came across a study recently that found a strong relationship between people’s self-perceived age and their cardiovascular health. This study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association – Internal Medicine in December 2014, basically says that older people who reported feeling younger had a far lower death rate than those who said they felt older. That’s very interesting! Simplifying this one more step – this study basically says that if you believe you are younger (than your age), then you will be! How did the researchers determine this? They started by...
Read MoreReduce the Risk of Falls
For anyone with aging or elderly parents, fall prevention is one of the most important topics to learn a little about. Our nation’s Public Health Agency released it’s second “Seniors Falls in Canada Report” this year and a summary of some of the very helpful information follows. First, let’s look at some staggering statistics: Falls are the leading cause of hospital admission for seniors Falls cause a longer hospital stay than any other ailments or injuries, an average of three weeks Falls are the #1 cause of a senior being forced to move into a nursing home Falls cause 95%...
Read MoreCanada’s First Seniors Advocate
Recently, Nurse Next Door Home Care Services sponsored a local event that brought British Columbia’s Seniors Advocate to Duncan to present on the most important and relevant issues facing seniors in our communities. On March 19, 2014, the Government of British Columbia announced the appointment of Isobel Mackenzie as Canada’s first Seniors Advocate. With nearly 20 years of experience working on behalf of seniors at local, provincial and national levels, Ms. McKenzie has the appropriate credentials. Watching her speak, it was clearly evident that she has seen many sides of seniors care...
Read MoreStart The Conversation
Do you know what advance care planning is? You should. Advance care planning is when you or a loved one writes down your wishes and instructions for future health care. Basically, it’s a living will built around one’s beliefs, values and wishes. Advance care planning allows someone to express fully and thoughtfully their wishes for future health decisions. Why is this so important? We see it all the time where people don’t have advance care planning in place and it makes it so difficult … difficult on their family most of all. How is someone supposed to make a potentially life or...
Read MoreToo Exhausted To Care?
It is stressful for adult children to provide comprehensive daily care to their elderly parents, especially when one or both of their parents are not as independent any more. It’s usually the daughter caring for her elderly mother. The family caregiver can become mentally and physically exhausted, irritable and resentful. I was reading a very informative article about ‘caregiver burnout’ last week and noted that all the same signs and tips around caregiver burnout were the same as what someone may experience with any type of burnout. Do you want to check and see if you qualify? Are...
Read MoreMultitasking and Mobility Risks
Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it. – Clint Eastwood In cognitive psychology, “cognitive load” is the load related to the control of our working memory. Theories say that during complex learning activities, the amount of information that must be processed simultaneously can overload the overall limit of working memory that one possesses. Working memory also includes the visual representation of pending body movements. The more a person attempts to learn/process in a shorter amount of time, the more difficult it is to process that information in working memory. For...
Read MoreA Lesson in Missed Opportunity
Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them. – William Arthur Ward Perhaps you saw in one of our previous articles about how Nurse Next Door’s Dream On Seniors Wish Foundation aims to make the dreams of elder seniors come true. We even had the opportunity to make one come true a few months back which was incredibly fulfilling. This story was supposed to be about another recent dream come true. But it’s not. It’s a sad story from this past week that was crushing. Here’s why… We connected with a number of individual seniors and their spouses in the fall...
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