How A Servant’s Heart Can Help You

At A Servant’s Heart Senior Care, the needs of others come first!  Here, older adults and their families can navigate through the next steps in aging with expert care and advice while enjoying The Servant’s Heart Difference.

Whether it’s providing in-home caregivers so that your loved ones can remain at home with trustworthy home care or professional geriatric care managers to assist your family in working through difficult situations, we can help you discover new solutions, find the support that you need and provide a better tomorrow for you and your family.

Call 1-800-777-4750 TODAY to get started!

How A Servant’s Heart Can Help You

At A Servant’s Heart Senior Care, the needs of others come first!  Here, older adults and their families can navigate through the next steps in aging with expert care and advice while enjoying The Servant’s Heart Difference.

Whether it’s providing in-home caregivers so that your loved ones can remain at home with trustworthy home care or professional geriatric care managers to assist your family in working through difficult situations, we can help you discover new solutions, find the support that you need and provide a better tomorrow for you and your family.

Call 1-800-777-4750 TODAY to get started!

How A Servant’s Heart Can Help You

At A Servant’s Heart Senior Care, the needs of others come first!  Here, older adults and their families can navigate through the next steps in aging with expert care and advice while enjoying The Servant’s Heart Difference.

Whether it’s providing in-home caregivers so that your loved ones can remain at home with trustworthy home care or professional geriatric care managers to assist your family in working through difficult situations, we can help you discover new solutions, find the support that you need and provide a better tomorrow for you and your family.

Call 1-800-777-4750 TODAY to get started!

How A Servant’s Heart Can Help You

At A Servant’s Heart Senior Care, the needs of others come first!  Here, older adults and their families can navigate through the next steps in aging with expert care and advice while enjoying The Servant’s Heart Difference.

Whether it’s providing in-home caregivers so that your loved ones can remain at home with trustworthy home care or professional geriatric care managers to assist your family in working through difficult situations, we can help you discover new solutions, find the support that you need and provide a better tomorrow for you and your family.

Call 1-800-777-4750 TODAY to get started!

How A Servant’s Heart Can Help You

At A Servant’s Heart Senior Care, the needs of others come first!  Here, older adults and their families can navigate through the next steps in aging with expert care and advice while enjoying The Servant’s Heart Difference.

Whether it’s providing in-home caregivers so that your loved ones can remain at home with trustworthy home care or professional geriatric care managers to assist your family in working through difficult situations, we can help you discover new solutions, find the support that you need and provide a better tomorrow for you and your family.

Call 1-800-777-4750 TODAY to get started!

How A Servant’s Heart Can Help You

At A Servant’s Heart Senior Care, the needs of others come first!  Here, older adults and their families can navigate through the next steps in aging with expert care and advice while enjoying The Servant’s Heart Difference.

Whether it’s providing in-home caregivers so that your loved ones can remain at home with trustworthy home care or professional geriatric care managers to assist your family in working through difficult situations, we can help you discover new solutions, find the support that you need and provide a better tomorrow for you and your family.

Call 1-800-777-4750 TODAY to get started!

In This Issue:

• Senior Care Tool of the Month
• Coffee Intake Associated With Decreased Stroke Risk in Women
• Tips for Working with Home Care Companies

Windy March Greetings!

Temperatures are still chilly and snow is still falling across much of the country, but not here in beautiful San Diego County! Our weather may be a bit windy and cool, but we really do still live in paradise, compared to most  other places!

March is, of course, the month of St. Patrick’s day.Here’s something that may surprise you: People in the United States make a bigger deal of St. Patrick’s day than in Ireland! While it is a national holiday in Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is more of a religious holiday there. In recent years the Irish have also used it to boost the country’s tourism.

Meanwhile, back to reality: families everywhere are becoming more careful with their budgets and with every dollar that they spend. One way for Seniors to save money is to stay at home as long as possible before moving to a residential care setting. A Servant’s Heart Senior Care continues to offer the kind of care that keeps people in the comfort of their own homes for as long as possible, helping to make hard-earned dollars last longer.

With this issue of our newsletter we continue to offer the most recent in home care, elder care and aging news. We hope you enjoy this information in the spirit of camaraderie with which it was sent. As always, we thank you for your continued interest in A Servant’s Heart Senior Care.

CareCalendar is a FREE, donor-supported web based system to organize meals and other help for families during a time of illness or life changing event, such as the birth of a baby or death of a family member.

CareCalendar can also be used for long term situations, including homebound and caregiver respite care needs.

Here at A Servant’s Heart Senior Care we have seen families of our clients make very effective use of CareCalendar to keep the family and friends up-to-date on the client’s status. We think it’s a great tool and we wanted to make more people aware of it by featuring it here!

Here’s what it helps with:

• See what needs are unfilled and sign yourself up for them.
• Receive e-mail notifications: Get reminders about needs that you signed-up for and any unfilled needs for the day
• Get maps and driving directions: Know how to get to the recipients location, turn by turn.
• Access when convenient: CareCalendar is available around the clock. As long as you have access to the Internet, you can get to CareCalendar. No need to worry about interrupting the coordinator’s day when you can easily look it up for yourself.

Read all about it by clicking here.

Coffee Intake Associated With Decreased Stroke Risk in Women

A new analysis of data from the Nurses’ Health Study shows that long-term consumption of up to 4 or more cups of coffee per day was not associated with an increased risk for stroke and actually appeared to be protective against stroke in women who did not also smoke.

Among women who currently smoked, there appeared to be no effect of coffee intake, neither raising nor lowering stroke risk. No association was seen with other caffeinated drinks, including tea or soft drinks, and decaffeinated coffee still showed a trend toward a protective effect.

More information

Tips for Working With Home Care Companies

On a website called Senior Memos we noticed a great list of simple but effective tips for managing the relationship between a care-giving agency and the family of the older loved ones receiving care.  One of the biggest insights was the importance of communicating with the agency and the caregiver.

The author writes:

This is the first time they’ve had a caregiver on a regular basis and they have learned a lot from their experience. One of the biggest insights was the importance of communicating with the agency and the caregiver.

My parents used an agency to provide them with their caregiver. They decided to use a service rather than hire someone themselves because they did not want any employer responsibilities such as taxes, unemployment, etc. Additionally, and more importantly they did not want to run the risk of any legal exposure.

The author provides six simple but very specific tips that will help any family that is receiving services from a home care company.

Read the complete list of suggestions here.

In This Issue

• Surveys Continue to Reinforce In-Home Care as the Preferred Choice for Care
• Common Sense and Kindness Foremost in Facing Aging Effectively
• Who Employs Your Caregivers Really Does Matter!
• Grandparents Are Moving Back In
• Find the Baby Boomers Online!
• Warm Up Your Home

Greetings From A Servant’s Heart Senior Care!

Temperatures are dropping and snow is falling across much of the country, but not here in beautiful San Diego County! No matter where you live, and no matter how hold it gets there, along with the cold in February comes Valentines Day, and with it this simple reminder: a warm heart makes for a toasty and comfortable home! A Servant’s Heart Senior Care is continues to offer the kind of care that keeps people in the comfort of their own homes for as long as possible. Home is definitely where the heart is!

With this issue of our newsletter we continue to offer the most recent in home care, elder care and aging news. We hope you enjoy this information in the spirit of camaraderie with which it was sent. As always, we thank you for your continued interest in A Servant’s Heart Senior Care.

Surveys Continue to Reinforce In-Home Care as the Preferred Choice for Care

90% of respondents (Georgia AARP members between the ages of 50 and 60) in a recent survey reported that it would be extremely or very important to have services that would enable their family members and themselves to stay at home for as long as possible, if long-term care services were needed.

Read details here.

Common Sense and Kindness Foremost in Facing Aging Effectively

The current health care system is overburdened and often crisis-oriented with technology-focused care provided by medical specialists. Helping older adults to live at home for as long as possible is the best use of community resources. In his book, “My Mother, Your Mother,” geriatrician Dennis McCullough advocates for “slow medicine” when dealing with late life issues faced by older adults, a movement shaped by common sense and kindness. Slow medicine is based on the social model of elder care – hands-on, compassion and focus on day-to-day care in the home, taking time to value quality of life and honor relationships.

Click here to find out more about the book.

Unexpected Risks of Hiring “Independent Contractor” Caregivers

Who Employs Your Caregivers Really Does Matter!

Non-employer agencies take no responsibility for acts of negligence or dishonesty by their so-called independent contractor caregivers. That’s why such arrangements, while sometimes seeming less expensive, may actually bring significant risk and exposure to the clients and their families. Click here for a recent article about a recent case in point.

White House AND the Beltway Follow the “Granny Trend”

Marian Robinson, 71, Michelle Obama’s mother, will move into the White House to care for her grandchildren, Malia and Sasha Obama, when their parents are otherwise occupied.

According to national statistics (the 2007 American Community Survey) the number of people aged 65 and older living with their adult children increased 50 percent between 2000 and 2007. This is a rapidly growing trend and many families are finding it to be a useful tool in their overall planning for the care of their older loved ones. American Community survey.

Read the entire article.

Who is Making Decisions on Care for Aging Parents?

Their adult children are.

How would you reach them? ONLINE! The 77.2 million people now between ages 44 and 62 – known for decades as the “baby boomers” – now make up the largest group of US Internet users.

To read marketing details on how the boomers use the Internet, click here.

Move That Thermostat Up: Even Mildly Cool Homes with Temperatures from 60 to 65 Degrees Can Trigger Hypothermia in Older People

The National Institute on Aging Warns About Hypothermia Danger for Older People Hypothermia, which can be deadly if not treated quickly, is a special danger for older adults, as they are especially vulnerable. When a person’s body temperature drops below normal and stays low for a prolonged period of time, there is a risk of hypothermia. With advancing age, the body’s ability to endure long periods of exposure to cold is lowered.

Some tips for prevention:

• Wear several layers of loose clothing when it is cold. The layers will trap warm air between them. Tight clothing can keep blood from flowing freely and lead to loss of body heat.
• Wear a hat, scarf, gloves or mittens, and warm clothes when you go outside in cold weather. A significant amount of your body heat can be lost through your head, and hands and feet are the first body parts to get cold.
• To keep warm at home, wear long underwear under your clothes, along with socks and slippers. Use a blanket or afghan to keep legs and shoulders warm and wear a hat or cap indoors.
• Make sure your home is warm enough. Set your thermostat to at least 68 to 70 degrees. Even mildly cool homes with temperatures from 60 to 65 degrees can trigger hypothermia in older people.
• Check with your doctor to see if any medications (prescription or over the counter) you are taking may increase your risk for hypothermia.

For details, click here.

In This Issue:

• Watch Out for That Bed!
• Top 10 Signs You Have Too Much Stress In Your Life
• Diabetes: Take Control!
• Make Those Appliances Work For You!
• Googling Makes You Think
• Boot Camp For Your Brain

Greetings From A Servant’s Heart Senior Care!

For many, January is a time to start fresh. January offers a vibrant, enthusiastic start to a new year. At A Servant’s Heart Senior Care, we also think of January as a chance to reflect on the past year as well as to embrace what’s yet to come. We are thankful and grateful for all that 2008 brought us – including the relationships we’ve been lucky to create with people like you. We hope your holiday season was an enjoyable (and stress-free!) one.

As always, A Servant’s Heart Senior Care is committed to sharing the latest in home care, home health care and elder care news with colleagues, clients and friends. Please enjoy these articles in the spirit of community in which this newsletter was sent.

Happy New Year – Here’s to 2009!

The Team at A Servant’s Heart Senior Care

Watch Out for That Bed

Falls from bed are the second leading cause of fall deaths – after stairs and steps, reports the National Safety Council.

A bed fall occurs while transitioning from a sitting to a standing position from bed. Seniors and caregivers are both at risk. In 2006, the FDA published guidelines from the FDA Hospital Bed Safety Workgroup (HBSW). These guidelines address entrapment risks associated with bed accessories often used in the home.

Visit InvisibleCaregiver.com for more information on bed safety.

Top 10 Signs You Have Too Much Stress In Your Life

The “Top 10 tips for telling when you’re overwhelmed” are from Family of Loved Ones Magazine, a great resource for families of older adults.

Rene’ Cantwell, the magazine’s founder, writes, “We’ve all heard valiant stories of caregivers who have devoted time, energy and resources above and beyond what others may consider sensible. Many have done so to the detriment of health, relationships and security.
Managing our stress levels is imperative to maintaining good health. Caregivers are no strangers to pressure situations, and that’s all the more reason why we need a reminder to take care of ourselves.”

TOP TEN SIGNS YOU JUST MIGHT NEED A TIME-OUT!

By Rene’ Cantwell, Founder-Families of Loved Ones Magazine

1. You routinely replace the reply,”Good. How are you?” with “You have no idea!”

2. You justify the pounding in your chest as a cardiovascular exercise.

3. Annual doctor visits become monthly.

4. Sitting in the bathroom counts as downtime.

5. Getting drive-through while running errands equals a balanced meal.

6. You’ve perfected the “cortisol high” in lieu of an adrenaline high.

7. A commercial for a greeting card makes you cry.

8. You just drove to work/store/pharmacy and don’t remember driving.

9. You set a date to have some fun, and then postpone it.

10. Even your dog sighs when you walk by.

Click here for Family of Loved Ones Magazine

TCOYD: Taking Control Of Your Diabetes!

A Servant’s Heart Senior Care provides care and advice for many clients who have diabetes. We have heard good things about TCOYD from people who have benefitted from TCOYD’s programs and services. Because of this, we attended a TCOYD conference in San Diego in late 2008.

The information and presentations were terrific, and we were so impressed that we wanted to give them an endorsement here. TCOYD is a great resource for those who have diabetes and also for their families and friends.

Here’s a description of TCOYD and its services and information on how to get to their website:

Guided by the belief that every person with diabetes has the right to live a healthy, happy, and productive life, Taking Control of Your Diabetes (“TCOYD”) works to educate and motivate people with diabetes to take a more active role in their condition and to provide innovative and integrative continuing diabetes education to medical professionals caring for people with diabetes.

TCOYD is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 diabetes organization headquartered in Del Mar, California. Founded and directed by Dr. Steven Edelman, a nationally-recognized diabetes specialist who also has type 1 diabetes, the organization produces programs that aim to inform, motivate and empower participants to take control of their diabetes by producing day-long conferences around the country for persons with diabetes and their spouses or other loved ones.

TCOYD also offers a commercial-free public educational television series on living healthfully with diabetes, available online at the TCOYD TV web page, and across the country on satellite and cable TV. This excellent resource combines in-depth discussions between renowned health professionals in a talk show format with documentary-style interviews from people living with diabetes.

Click here for the Taking Control Of Your Diabetes! web site

Click here for the TCOYD TV web site

Make Those Appliances Work For You!

The appliance market is responding to the demands of boomers who want appliances that help them cope with the aches, pains and other infirmities they confront as they grow older. Roughly 76 million baby boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — control the biggest share of purchasing power for the roughly $25 billion U.S. appliance market, reports an article in the Wall Street Journal.

Some examples of the “senior-friendly” products are washing machines with pedestals that raise the height of washing machines and clothes dryers for customers with back problems. There are also washing machines with large knobs that make a louder-than-usual noise when they’re set, and a model that plays musical chimes to indicate washing temperature or other features. Brighter LED lighting improves visibility inside refrigerators. Some ovens can be raised up for easier access to prevent people from stooping awkwardly, losing their balance and burning themselves.

Read all about it here.

Search the Internet and Boost Brain Power

A new study found that searching the Internet exercises the brains of older people by activating their neural circuitry, says UCLA’s Memory & Aging Research Center.

• Internet searches activate regions in the brain that control complex reasoning and decision-making, the Center found in a nine-month study of 24 neurologically normal volunteers with similar education levels, ages 55 to 76.
• Noting that the brain activity was recorded in MRI results, the researchers reported that the test subjects showed richer sensory experience and heightened attention when conducting Internet searches, as opposed to reading book-like text on computers.

The Center’s findings are to be published next month in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Send Your Brain to Boot Camp for Retraining

UCLA’s Memory & Aging Research Center presents a one-day training session designed for people with age-related memory concerns who wish to improve or maintain their memory ability. The course is not intended for people with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia.

Brain Boot Camp participants will:
• Measure baseline memory, stress and fitness levels to individualize healthy lifestyle programs.
• Learn basic techniques to respond to everyday memory challenges.
• Sample a healthy brain diet and learn recipes for a brain-protective nutritional plan.
• Master advanced memory techniques for names and faces.
• Practice relaxation exercises to improve mental focus.
• Map out a daily lifestyle plan for maintaining benefits for the long haul.
  Gauge progress and notice results in just one day.

To learn more or sign up for Brain Boot Camp, contact the UCLA Memory & Aging Center at (310) 825-0545 or email bcamp@mednet.ucla.edu.

In This Issue

• Elderly Want to Age at Home
• Aging Myths
• Can You Smell That?
• Keep Active – Keep Mentally Alert
• High-Fat Diet Could Promote Development of Alzheimer’s Disease
• Links of Interest

Greetings From A Servant’s Heart Senior Care!

“Home for the Holidays” is a theme people often use this time of year. Home is considered more comfortable and for many people, home is where the heart is. At A Servant’s Heart Senior Care we work hard to ensure that our clients spend as many years in the comfort of their homes as possible. In this newsletter, we continue our mission of sharing the latest in home care, home health care and elder care news with colleagues, clients and friends.

Please enjoy these articles in the spirit of community in which this newsletter was sent.

Happy Holidays!

Given Housing Market Issues, Aging in Place is the # 1 Choice

South Florida is one of the nation’s worst hit areas for real estate downturns, but the region’s bad real-estate market is having at least one positive side benefit. An article in the Orlando Sentinel states that, “Businesses that help South Florida homeowners ‘age in place’ – or stay in their homes as long as possible – are gaining popularity with seniors and their adult children as more elders choose not to move into assisted living facilities.” Read the full article here.

Breaking Myths of Aging

Tips, advice and anecdotes offered by geriatrician Dr. John Morley:

The artist known as Grandma Moses, who passed away at age 103, took up painting in old age after her hands and fingers became so crippled that she could no longer quilt. The Impressionist Art movement was helped along by Monet’s blurred vision. Willem de Kooning made his best art after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Ditto Ravel’s simple, repeating melody we know as “Bolero” was composed after dementia settled into the composer’s brain. Critics think Michelangelo’s first Pieta, done when the sculptor was 25, is inferior to the one he did at 80. Nelson Mandela’s presidency was all the more remarkable because Mandela survived years as a political prisoner to become president when he was 80. Roger Bacon’s prescription for healthy aging included all things in moderation, proper diet, rest, exercise and – for the book jacket – “inhaling the breath of a young virgin.”

Read the full article.

Losing the Sense of Smell? Could Be a Sign of Impaired Cognition

Participants in a hearing loss study at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, were reported to have unexpectedly presented an intriguing connection between reduced odor identification ability and the association with the subsequent incidence of cognitive impairment. This conclusion was reported in the August issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. Lead investigator Carla Schubert told Reuters Health that “participants who performed poorly on an odor identification test were at higher risk for cognitive impairment 5 years later.”

Read about the study.

Keep Active – Keep Mentally Alert

A 2008 study by the Harvard School of Public Health found evidence that seniors in the United States with active social lives may have slower rates of memory decline and lower mortality rates. In fact, memory decline among the most integrated of the study subjects was less than half the rate among the least integrated (findings were independent of age, gender, race and health status).

To read the full press release, click here.

High-Fat Diet Could Promote Development of Alzheimer’s Disease

A recent study conducted on mice suggests that metabolic changes induced by a diet rich in fat (diets typical of most industrialized countries) could affect the inflammatory response in the brain, thus contributing to Alzheimer’s disease. The study was done on mice and the authors of this study admit that the work might not translate from mice to humans, but they feel the addition of more Omega-3 fatty acids to a diet are not likely to hurt a person and may significantly help.

Read the entire article here.

Links of Interest

Open enrollment time? To save money, open a flexible spending account, use mail-order prescription drug services and tap into discounts on gym memberships.

A simple online calculator for businesses to estimate the costs of elder care in the workplace.

A primer on aging related terms.