Keeping Older Adults Independent

  Malnutrition, A Real Issue for Seniors How to Help Your Parents Not Fall Into It Malnutrition affects older adults in many ways and it comes in many forms for seniors in particular.  Nearly 40% of older adults (age 51 and higher) are overweight in the United States.  Seniors can be underweight as well and the reasons that cause this are something I will go into in this article.  Lack of food is an issue ( there are meal delivery services available ), but what about the seniors that have food in the fridge but still do not eat, that is something that we as adult children sometimes fail to understand the underlying issues why our parents do that.  Adult children find out about their parents not eating from the side effects that result from missing meals, such as falling.  Falling is one of the major side effects from not eating as the older adult gets dizzy or disoriented.  We want to prevent falls in older adults, so regular food consumption is a pr...

Companion Care is the Most Critical Stage of Your Aging Cycle Companion care is the most important and absolutely the most critical stage of care to maintaining your independence.  Companion care is early-stage care that is non-medical and its definition of what it does can be found in its name, it provides companionship.  In the United States, older adults are much more likely to live alone than in other countries.  That percentage increases with age.  The reason this stage of care is so important are because of two factors: it is the stage where you can make the biggest impact on an older adult's independence and the stage where you can make the biggest impact in saving the older adult money for care related expenses. How Companion Care Can Extend Independence An older adult living alone can have very infrequent interaction with others.  Family can live far away and studies have shown that living alone can cause depression .  This is dangerous for an ...

How Scammers Target Seniors Advice on how to avoid being scammed       I have older parents that live alone and they often call me to tell me about how someone called them to get their credit card number or asked them for their social security number and they refused.  Many older adults today are wary of scammers targeting them, they are a large demographic that controls a lot of money as a group and people with bad intentions know this and see this as an opportunity.  They bet on the numbers game, meaning that they will call 100 people and if they get one, then they have accomplished their mission.  Communicating what we hear or personal experiences to others are absolutely key to preventing the next senior from being scammed, we need to keep our older parents safe.  If you are reading this and have a family member that has been a victim or intended victim, please share your story in the comments below.   I am a huge advocate for keeping se...