When we are sick or injured or when we are planning to travel, we often try to recall past immunizations as well as determine if boosters are required. Yearly flu shots and the special pneumonia shots for our senior parents are fairly easy to remember. However, the boosters that update past inoculations are more difficult … Continue reading
Filed under Senior Health …
Aging, Falls, Music, and Dalcroze Eurhythmics
How interesting to read about the research Effect of Music-Based Multitask Training on Gait, Balance, and Fall Risk in Elderly People (abstract), an article published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The article is not freely available from the medical journal, so to read it you will need to speak with a librarian or go to … Continue reading
Three-Part Series on the Rigors of Aging Parent Caregiving
This week I discovered a great three-part series about aging parent caregiving, written by an adult child and published in the Redondo Beach Patch. I recommend taking a few minutes to read this set of short articles. When Mom Gets Old by Vanessa Poster appeared on March 15 – 17, 2010, and describes Ms. Poster’s … Continue reading
Medical Histories Support Aging Parents and Their Families
What is more important for the personal health of an individual –a family history taken by a physician or genetic testing? According to an Associated Press article published in the Washington Post, while genetic testing has important uses, people should be aware that a thorough family history taken by a physician is what Cleveland Clinic geneticist, … Continue reading
Another Great MedicareBlogger Post
MedicareBlogger has another posted interesting post, this time focusing on a man who wants a cheaper Medicare Advantage plan when he really needs a Medicare Supplement plan. Medicare Advantage Selling Season, a November 18, 2010 post, conveys a lot of information in a few short paragraphs.
Senior Parents and Long Term Insurance Changes
During the time we cared for my husband’s mother and even before that when we helped a bit with his father’s care, we were continually frustrated by their long-term care insurance policies. Despite several years of required care for his two senior parents, the long-term care policies, purchased in early 1991, covered only skilled nursing facilities … Continue reading
Medicare Part D – It’s Time to Make Choices
It’s that time of year again. I’ve just been chatting with my mother about her annual task of choosing a Medicare Part D option for herself and my dad. Each year she looks at charts, chats with friends, consults with her pharmacist, studies web sites, and finally, after a great deal of thought, makes the … Continue reading
Alzheimer’s: Helping a Parent Manage Financial Issues
Interesting article in the November 5, 2010 New York Times describing how adult children can get started helping with finances when a parent has Alzheimer’s. In Stepping in for a Parent With Alzheimer’s reporter Tara Siegel Bernard consults with financial planners, shares their ideas, makes specific suggestions about getting started, and offers tips about how to be … Continue reading
Seniors and Whooping Cough Vaccine
With a pertussis epidemic in California and cases on the rise in other states, experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are recommending that elderly parents, especially those who have grandchildren or are around infants, get re-immunized against the disease. According to the LA Times report on the October 27th CDC panel … Continue reading
Great Interview With Dr. Berwick at JAMA
An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Medicare Head Donald M. Berwick, MD, Takes on Mission of Health System Reform, should put to rest any doubt about his commitment to high quality medicine and to seniors’ access to it. The article is free and can be downloaded as a PDF. Some … Continue reading
Advertising: Do Seniors Need Media Literacy Training??
Most advertising that sells things to seniors frustrates me. An article, from the Tucson Citizen, gives but one example of just how much target people who are older, in this case by the AARP. AARP Advertising to Seniors, posted about a year ago in October 2009 by the newspaper’s MedicareBlogger, tells the story of an 80-year-old … Continue reading
An Alzheimer’s Statistic I Did Not Know
Writing in the October 27, 2010 New York Times, three prestigious AIDS advocates, including retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, call for a “man-on-the-moon” effort, setting a goal to stop Alzheimer’s, by the year 2020. Justice O’Connor, writing on the op-ed page along with medicine Nobel Prize winner, Stanley Prusiner (read his Nobel Price acceptance speech), and … Continue reading
More Senior Emergency Departments are Opening
More emergency rooms designed expressly for seniors are opening, according to an October 25, 2010 article in the Detroit News, Hospitals Designing Senior ERs to Cater to Needs of the Elderly. The report, by Detroit News reporter Melissa Burden, describes how hospital systems in Michigan are are opening senior ERs for the good of older … Continue reading
Can We Walk More and Help Our Aging Parents Do the Same?
Read The Pedometer Test: Americans Take Fewer Steps, an article by Tara Parker-Pope published in the October 19 , 2010 New York Times Well Blog. Parker-Pope describes a study, in which adults wore pedometers for two days as they went about their daily activities. In the study, Pedometer-Measured Physical Activity and Health Behaviors in U.S. Adults … Continue reading
The Unexpected Caregiver
Check out the radio program, The Unexpected Caregiver, broadcast on KYMN Radio in Northfield, Minnesota. Host Kari Berit and her guests discuss caregiving, communication, health, medical information, and other critical issues that arise when adult children help aging parents. I listened to the program with Connie Goldman, the program on the dangers of denying our … Continue reading
Physical Capability and Aging
Research published on September 10, 2010 by British Medical Journal (BMJ), Objectively Measured Physical Capability Levels and Mortality: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, re-examined a range of published studies that looked at the physical capabilities of older adults. Conducting a meta-analysis, which is a statistical method for examining multiple studies and pooling the results, researchers reviewed results … Continue reading
Getting Ready for the Gray Tsunami… Staggering Statistics
The American Medical News, a publication of the American Medical Association (AMA), just published an interesting opinion piece, Coping with Baby Boomers and Staggering Statistics, by Ardis Dee Hoven, M.D., a AMA board member. After the statistics, she has many ideas and recommendations for physicians, medical training, especially in relation to geriatrics information.
Seattle Times Series — “Seniors for Sale”
For the past several days I’ve been excitedly writing posts about the Green House Homes initiative and specifically about how the continuing care retirement community where my parents live is planning to build these homes. The whole point of Green Houses is to make late life elder care safe, respectful, thoughtful, and homelike. The movement … Continue reading
Replacing a Nursing Community with Green Houses: Part II
Ideas about changing the nursing care at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community (VMRC) began when carpets were replaced in one of the memory neighborhoods. For several days residents with memory disabilities spent their waking hours visiting a more home-like assisted living area. The caregivers immediately spotted a change — people from the memory neighborhood were more … Continue reading
Long-lived Seniors Give Advice to Med Students
A delightful article appearing in the September 7, 2010 Cleveland Plain Dealer describes a panel discussion presented to second year medical students at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Panel members, all in their 90’s, told the medical students what physicians need to do to be more helpful to elderly patients. The article, Elders … Continue reading
As Our Parents Age So Do We 