Tag Archives: elderly

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Aging Health Issues

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New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

Doctors are faced with questions everyday regarding even the most common ailments. Many people who experience these symptoms write them off as minor and may not seek medical attention when it’s needed. Here we provide you the information you need to determine whether your symptoms may indicate a greater medical issue.

What could it mean when you’ve experienced unexpected weight loss?

• Diabetes (symptoms include weight loss, intense thirst and frequent urination)
• Depression (experiencing weight loss, apathy and insomnia)
• Stomach Ulcer (indicated by weight loss, severe and recurrent upper abdominal pain)

Why is your cough persisting even after you’ve recovered from a respiratory illness (i.e. the flu)?

• Pneumonia/lung inflammation (cough worsens as opposed to improving)

What might the sudden onset of an itchy rash mean?

• Anaphylactic shock; a severe allergic reaction to medication, food or bug bite (signs may include the appearance of hives, and swelling around the mouth or face). Emergency treatment is required!

When might your severe headaches be telling you?

• Tumor (symptoms are blurred/double vision, loss of peripheral vision, instability when standing or walking, nausea and/or vomiting)
• Aneurism/mild stroke (sensation described as “unlike anything you’ve ever felt before, with a sudden onset of symptoms)

When could your chest pain be more than indigestion?

• Heart attack (experiencing severe pain in center of chest, also felt in shoulders, arms or back, nausea and sweating and/or shortness of breath)
• Angina/ arteriosclerosis; hardening of the arteries (symptoms include dull heavy chest pain brought on by physical strain or extreme emotion which disappears with the reduction of physical and emotional stress)

If you are experiencing any of the above symptoms or have concerns about any persistent medical issues, please contact your physician as soon as possible.

Bathroom Safety for Seniors

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New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

The bathroom and the kitchen are not the only places where your family member can get hurt. Most households have other danger zones as well. Controlling access to these areas becomes an issue sooner or later in most caregiving households.

When you care for someone with Alzheimer’s disease, accessibility can be a double-edged concern. You may want to make some areas in your home “off-limits”, such as outside doors, stairways, closets and other places where important or potentially harmful materials are stored. On the other hand, you may want to improve access to some areas – making tubs and showers more accessible or making stairways and outside steps easier to use.

As a rule of thumb, try to improve access in areas that encourage the person to do things independently as long as it is safe. Limit access when the family member’s abilities and understanding have diminished to the point that he or she needs supervision to be in an area.

Senior Fitness

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New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

The National Institutes of Health recommend four types of exercises for seniors who want to stay healthy and independent (and who doesn’t?). Sharon O’Brien reports on them for About.com

Strength exercises build older adult muscles and increase metabolism, which helps to keep weight and blood sugar in check.

Balance exercises build leg muscles, decreasing the chance of falls (leading cause of admission into nursing homes).

Stretching exercises give you more freedom of movement. It’s particularly important that older drivers do stretching exercises because not being able to turn your head adequately, for instance, will limit your range of vision.

Endurance exercises are any activity – walking, jogging, swimming, biking, even raking leaves – that increases your heart rate and breathing for an extended period of time. Build endurance gradually, starting with as little as five minutes of activity per session.

For details on the exercises and how to get started, go to http://seniorliving.about.com/od/exercisefitnes1/a/4seniorexercise.htm.

5 Questions to Ask Your Financial Planner

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1. How have my investments actually performed? It’s scary to watch the Dow drop by more than 700 points in one day. But how does that compare with your own investments? “To some extent, everyone is seeing market losses right now,” says John Gannon, senior vice president of investor education for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). “But it’s really an important time to open your account statements and take a look at them and benchmark your performance.”

Ask your financial adviser to compare the performance of your investments to relevant indexes or to other funds with similar investing strategies — focusing on the past few months and years, not the day-to-day gyrations.

Also ask about the performance of your overall portfolio, focusing on the past one, three and five years. “I really feel that no financial-planning client or investment advisory client should be doing as badly as the markets; that is, if the broad market is down 25%, then they should be down no more than 20% and probably less,” says Bob Veres, publisher of Inside Information, a well-respected newsletter for financial planners.

2. How do my investments match my time frame and goals? One of the biggest benefits of working with a financial planner is that he or she should pick investments within the context of your overall financial plan — dividing your savings into several sections and selecting the investments for each based on your time frame and goals.

And ask about the adviser’s strategy for meeting your medium-term goals.

3. What adjustments are you making because of this market? “A good adviser will have put a plan in place that expects horrible times in the markets,” says Daniel Moisand, a certified financial planner in Melbourne, Fla., and chairman of the Certified Financial Planner Board’s disciplinary and ethics commission.

The adviser shouldn’t make rash decisions during a market downturn, especially if you’ve been well-diversified and your investments match your time frame and goals. “Any adviser who says you should sell everything during the capitulation period of a bear market is not somebody I would want to work with,” Veres says.

4. How much am I paying for guarantees? Some “advisers” may offer to eliminate future worries by selling a product promising big guarantees. “I would be highly skeptical of any product pitches that purport to have severed the relationship between risk and reward,” says Moisand.

5. How do you plan to keep me updated and answer questions? You can learn a lot about your financial planner during this crisis — not just how he or she manages your investments, but how well the adviser explains the situation and what action you should take, answers your questions and makes you feel more comfortable. “This is probably the time when you need your financial professional more than at any other time,” says Gannon.

And your adviser should be giving you the attention you deserve now.

If you haven’t been satisfied with your planner’s performance, see In Search of Good Advice for help finding a new one.

http://kiplinger.com/columns/ask/archive/2008/q1027.htm

NJ Holiday Gifts for Seniors

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New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

Holidays are approaching.. are you grappling with gift ideas for the senior in your life. Let us help you with that! We found several articles that you might want to check out before going to the mall.

Some ideas “Gifts for Seniors” mentioned here are:

  • Blankets, robes, slippers
  • Personal items; hand & body lotions, shower & bath gels, scented candles
  • Gift certificates for gas, restaurants, or super markets
  • Books & magazine subscriptions
  • Towels, Wash cloths
  • Read the full article

Another good article offering senior gift ideas – Christmas Gift Ideas 

It suggests:

  • Offer to clean their house once a week or help them to maintain their yard. 
  • Do you have a child in your household who always needs extra money? Is the child old enough to wash dishes? Discuss the idea with the elderly and the child - You pay the child.
  • Do you love to bake or cook? Bake a cake, pie or prepare a meal for the person.
  • Give a gift basket filled with bath supplies.
  • Give food baskets filled with anything from cookies, candies, meats, breads, wines, and crackers and cheeses and everything in between.

Great gift ideas for your elderly loved one at Christmas!