It’s essential to evaluate and keep an eye on irritated skin. Personal care at home can help look for anything abnormal, and when it arises, they may be able to take them to the doctor for further evaluation. You may think skin care can take the back burner as someone ages, but it is something that seniors should never neglect! Here are some things a senior may struggle with and practical tips that personal care at home can help a senior with.

Skin Struggles Seniors May Have

A regular part of aging is forming wrinkles and sagging. This has a lot to do with sun exposure which damages senior’s skin. The sun exposure breaks elastin fibers which helps make skin appear plump; when they break, it causes wrinkles and sagging! Another thing usually caused by sun damage is dark spots that look like freckles but are a bit bigger. Therefore, it is important to take your senior to the dermatologist to check out any freckles, sun spots, or moles to ensure they’re not cancerous.

Another skin struggle for seniors is developing dehydrated skin. The primary cause of this skin problem is the drying out of the skin and the insufficient intake of liquids that the skin needs to stay hydrated. Rough, scaly skin is a common side effect of dehydration or inadequate hydration. If your senior needs help to moisturize their skin, it’s time to look into hiring personal care at home.

As your senior ages, you may also find that they bruise super easily, which can be concerning if you’re not expecting it. Seniors are more prone to bruising easily due to the thinning of the skin that occurs with age. As skin thins, it becomes less resilient and more prone to damage. As people age, they also tend to take more medications, which can increase their risk of bruising. Poor nutrition and lack of exercise can also lead to thinner skin, making it more susceptible to bruising.

Skin Care Tips for Seniors

If your senior needs any help with the tips below, it’s crucial to hire the right personal care at home to help them age in place and care for their skin.

Keep Washing

Sometimes seniors don’t want to shower because it is hard to get into the tub, or they may not remember what to do. But the truth is a senior should be bathing 3-4 times a week and using a gentle cleanser on their entire body. While they’re in the shower, they should try to exfoliate to get rid of the dead skin cells at least once a week.

Moisturize After Showers

A lack of moisture can cause dry skin, which can be so discomforting. A senior should moisturize daily and especially after the shower. Pick something gentle and fragrance-free to help avoid any skin irritation.

If you or an aging loved one is considering personal care at home in Red Lodge, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390

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What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. Mindfulness is a practice of remaining present in each moment of what’s happening. The practice invites anyone who wants to try it to pause, breathe, and to pay attention to each activity as it is occurring. Multitasking does not work well with mindfulness, because it contributes to scattered thinking. If your elderly family member wants to practice mindfulness, she may find that it offers her some serious benefits.

Better Mental Health

One of the results that people who practice mindfulness report is improved mental health, better coping with feelings of anxiety, and reduced stress. Simply spending some time engaging in mindfulness can also help your elderly family member’s memory and concentration, which she might be more worried about as she grows older.

Better Physical Health

Mindfulness, like other relaxation techniques, can help the physical body as well. People who are dealing with chronic illnesses like high blood pressure and diabetes may find that mindfulness helps them to be more aware of how they feel, which can help them to improve overall health. Combining mindfulness with activities like tai chi or yoga can help in other ways, too, like improving flexibility and balance.

Incorporating Mindfulness Into Daily Life

Building mindfulness practices into her daily life might be easier than your senior thinks. Mindful breathing is something that she can do at any time, simply concentrating on her breathing for a few minutes each day. Mindful eating is another important activity. If your elderly family member doesn’t sit down at a table and eat right now, she might want to consider making that change and include a mindfulness practice with her meals. In-home care professionals can help her to have healthy meals to enjoy, too.

Challenges with Mindfulness

Your elderly family member might feel as if her life is too complicated to practice mindfulness. If she’s having trouble with daily activities, they may take a lot more time and energy than they used to. That can leave her less desire and time to feel as if she can spend time focusing on her breathing. This is another area where elder care professionals are a huge help, because they can free up her time and energy so that she can pay attention to self-care tasks like mindfulness.

Mindfulness alone can’t completely reverse health issues, of course, but it can help your elderly family member to have greater peace of mind. Spending a little bit of time each day in mindfulness practices can give your senior huge results if she sticks with them.

Reference
https://www.webmd.com/balance/guide/meditation-natural-remedy-for-insomnia

If you or an aging loved one is considering in-home care in Broadview, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390

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Offering your senior loved one snacks throughout the day will let them eat when they want to eat and help them get the calories they need to stay healthy. But the type of snacks that seniors eat also is important. Filling up on empty calorie snacks can make seniors sicker. Instead of keeping a lot of filler snacks in the house make sure that your senior loved one has plenty of high protein snacks like these available:

Cottage Cheese And Yogurt

Cottage cheese and yogurt both have large amounts of protein which seniors need to stay healthy. And if your senior loved one isn’t eating regular meals they probably aren’t getting enough protein. One cup of cottage cheese has roughly 25 grams of protein, about the same as a regular sized hamburger. And a regular sized container of yogurt typically has about 17 grams of protein. You can mix either yogurt or cottage cheese with fruit or spices to make them even more delicious.

Cheese And Deli Meats

Sliced hard cheeses like cheddar cheese are a fantastic snack for seniors because they are small sized and easy to eat but have a lot of protein, vitamins, and minerals that seniors need. You can even buy a premade cheese plate full of different kinds of cheeses that your senior can pick at throughout the day. Deli meats like pepperoni, salami, or turkey breast are also great snacks. Roll up some cheese or cream cheese in a slice of salami or deli turkey and it’s a protein bomb that will keep your senior loved one full and give them a lot of the protein and fat they need to eat. Just be careful with deli meats because they can be high in sodium.

Protein Shakes

Protein shakes are an ideal snack for seniors. Some protein shakes have as much as 30 grams of protein but less than 200 calories. And they come in so many delicious flavors seniors will never get bored with the flavors available. You can buy protein shakes in bulk at large box stores, which is a great way to ensure that your senior parent has some high protein shelf stable snacks at home in case there is a weather emergency.

Edamame

Edamame can be eaten fresh or frozen. Just microwave frozen edamame for a minute to warm it up before serving, or have your senior loved one’s elder care provider warm it up. Edamame is easy to eat and has vitamins and minerals as well as 6 grams of protein per serving.

Source
https://www.webmd.com/diet/types-of-protein-snacks

If you or an aging loved one is considering elder care in Shepherd, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390

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Home care assistance is needed, but you’re not sure where to start. Here are seven tips that help you plan home care services.

Gather the Family For a Talk

Who is directly involved in your dad’s care? Those are the people who need to be part of a conversation about his care needs. Gather them for a talk about what they notice he has to have help completing. What can he do independently?

Find Out What Your Dad Doesn’t Do Independently

As you build the list of things your dad does each week, build a list of the things he cannot do without help. This is the list of tasks a family caregiver is helping him do.

Plan Schedules and Look for Gaps

As a picture of your dad’s care needs is clarified, go over who is available to help out each week. How much time do those people have to invest in his care? Where are their gaps?

When there are gaps in the schedule, it’s important to make sure he’s supported during those times. That often means bringing in home care aides.

Investigate Your Dad’s Health Care Needs

You have an idea of what your dad needs right now, but how about in the months and years to come? If he has heart disease, his need for care may increase. If he has dementia, he’s definitely going to need increasing amounts of care in the future.

Explore His Social Network

Does your dad have a large circle of friends or has it shrunk over the years? After retirement, you may not see close co-workers as much. As people retire, they may start traveling the world or moving to areas where the cost of living is lower. Sometimes, older adults move to new states to be closer to their grandchildren.

If your dad’s social network has gotten smaller, who is left for him to talk to? Does he socialize at all anymore? As socialization is important to his mental and physical health, you need to make sure he’s not feeling isolated from others.

Talk to His Eye Doctor

Is your dad’s vision okay or does he have common eye conditions like glaucoma or cataracts? If his vision declines, will he have to stop driving? What does that mean for your family? Are people able to take time off to get him to medical appointments?

Ask Your Dad What He Thinks

Finally, ask your dad what he thinks would help him the most. If his goal is to remain independent, what does he least like doing? Where does he feel caregivers would be beneficial?

Use these tips to start a conversation with your family and then the home care assistance specialist. The more prepared you are with a list of questions, concerns, and goals, the easier it is to make sure your dad’s care plan is matched perfectly to his needs.

Source
https://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/guide/planning-for-home-care

If you or an aging loved one is considering home care assistance in Columbus, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390

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If you are concerned that your loved one might be low on Vitamin D, a simple blood test can get the results for you and your loved one. Often, being low in Vitamin D has no symptoms, but if your loved one is suffering from several of these symptoms and has no other health condition that may be causing the symptoms, having a doctor do a quick blood test to check Vitamin D levels could be a good course of action to determine what is causing your loved one to experience these symptoms.

• Not sleeping well.
  If your loved one is tossing and turning more at night or has shared with you and her senior home care team that she’s exhausted because she can’t sleep at night, it could be that she’s low on Vitamin D. Not sleeping well leads to daytime exhaustion that can be hard for her to overcome.
• Aches in her bones.
  When your loved one says she just hurts all over and it goes down to her bones, a lack of Vitamin D may be the culprit. This achiness and pain can also really tire her out, making doing any sort of activity, even ones she enjoys like going on a walk in the garden with her senior home care provider, seem like too much effort to do.
• Feeling depressed and morose.
  Someone whose Vitamin D levels are low may find themselves in a bit of a funk that they can’t seem to get out of. They may begin to feel depressed and sad, not really having a reason why, but just a general feeling of being blue that doesn’t seem to go away. Since Vitamin D helps manage a person’s mood, when it’s low, depression may come on without much warning.
• Getting sick more often than normal.
  If your loved one can’t seem to shake that cold, or has battled a sore throat several times this season, it might be because she doesn’t have enough Vitamin D.
• Hair loss or looking pale.
  Both of these symptoms, when combined with any of the above, could be due to a lack of Vitamin D.

People with darker skin, who are obese, or who have osteoporosis are more likely to suffer from low Vitamin D levels. If your loved one has those risk factors in addition to several of the symptoms listed above, it might be as simple as a deficiency in Vitamin D, which can easily be treated with supplements, food choices, and of course, plenty of sunshine.

If you or an aging loved one is considering senior home care in Huntley, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390

The post Is Your Loved One Vitamin D Deficient? appeared first on SYNERGY HomeCare of Billings.

Alzheimer’s

Around 6.5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. In the early stages, your dad will be pretty independent, but that can change quickly.

One of the first things to change is the ability to drive his car. He needs someone to drive him as his motor skills and cognitive skills decrease. Your dad needs someone to remind him to take medications, cook his meals, and clean the home for him. In time, he’ll need help with hygiene, grooming, and toileting.

Arthritis

Arthritis is the most common chronic health condition in the U.S. It affects 24% of all adults and over half of all adults aged 65 or older. Severe arthritis pain impacts mobility and makes it hard to clean the house, do laundry, and even drive a car.

Your dad will find it helpful to have caregivers to support him when he takes walks, steps in and out of the shower, or even cook meals for him if he struggles with standing in place for extended periods.

Cancer

One out of three people will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime. Some cancers are easily treated if caught early. Skin cancer is one of them. Other cancers require treatments like chemo, radiation, and surgery.

If your dad has cancer, he will need someone to drive him to his medical appointments. He will need help at home with personal care, housework, and meals. He may need help taking care of his pets and scheduling appointments.

Chronic Kidney Disease

Around 37 million adults have chronic kidney disease and must carefully manage their salt intake and take medications daily. Some reach a point where dialysis is necessary. If your dad has kidney disease he may need someone available to bring him for dialysis treatments each week or even more often.

Diabetes

More than 37 million Americans have diabetes. If your dad is one of them, he may need help reading labels in the store to make sure he’s buying items that don’t contain hidden sugar. He may need someone to join him on walks to ensure he gets enough exercise.

Stroke

Slowly count to 40. In around that amount of time, someone, somewhere in the U.S. has had a stroke. After a stroke, the amount of care your dad needs at home is tremendous. He needs help showering, cooking meals, cleaning his home, and getting out of bed or out of a chair.

Your dad needs someone to drive him around. He often needs help shopping, medication reminders, and assistance with toileting, too.

If your dad has any of these health conditions, it’s important to arrange in-home care services. Your dad has someone to help him with the things he needs to do when taking care of his health. Talk to an in-home care specialist to learn more.

Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/infographic/chronic-diseases.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/arthritis/communications/features/4things.htm
https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/facts-figures
https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/factsheets/cancer.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/factsheets/diabetes-prediabetes.htm
https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/about-chronic-kidney-disease

If you or an aging loved one is considering in-home care in Lockwood, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390

The post In-Home Care Helps With Six of the Most Common Chronic Health Issues appeared first on SYNERGY HomeCare of Billings.

What Is Glaucoma?

To better understand why glaucoma affects your dad’s mobility, it’s important to look at what the disease is. The most common type of glaucoma is open-angle glaucoma, and 90% of glaucoma cases are this type.

Typically, the fluid (aqueous humor) in your eye drains as the eye replenishes older fluid with new fluid. Sometimes, the canals where the fluid drains out start to narrow and make it harder for that fluid to exit. As the fluid builds up, it puts pressure on the optic nerve.

This pressure will cause the fibers in the optic nerve to die. This creates blind spots. Often, glaucoma starts with the peripheral vision first. There is no cure for glaucoma, but treatments can slow progression.

Glaucoma often doesn’t have noticeable symptoms. The most common ones – headaches, nausea, vomiting, eye redness, and blurred vision – are easily ignored as being other issues, or in the case of blurry vision, may be overlooked, especially if your dad’s vision was already blurry without glasses.

Glaucoma Can Lead to Blindness

If glaucoma isn’t treated, it can lead to blindness over time. This can impact your dad’s mobility in many ways. First, he’s not going to be able to clearly see items on the floor or in his walking path. He can end up stubbing his toe, tripping, and falling. Falls can be severe and lead to head injuries and bone fractures.

Your dad may have a hard time with depth perception. He can’t see where a step starts and ends, again increasing his risk of a fall. He might have a hard time stepping onto a curb or stepping over the edge of a tub. He’s going to need help when he’s walking around or getting in and out of the shower.

Nausea and vomiting are possible with glaucoma. While these do not impact mobility directly, they can make him less likely to want to move around, especially if there is no bathroom nearby. He may refuse to leave his home for walks, appointments, or rides in a car. He needs support.

Arrange Senior Home Care Aides to Assist Him

If your dad’s vision is diminishing, it’s important to schedule senior home care services. He shouldn’t be alone all day, every day. Home care aides can help him get to his appointments, run errands, keep his home clean, and cook meals for him.

Call a senior care specialist and ask about these companion care and personal care services that benefit your dad. Glaucoma may impact his vision, but it doesn’t have to isolate him.

Sources:
https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/glaucoma/types-glaucoma

If you or an aging loved one is considering senior home care in Red Lodge, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390

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Alberta Bair would like all Veterans to attend! If cost is a concern, call SYNERGY HomeCare (406)839-2390 and we can get you set up with free tickets!

Hope to see you there!

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Investigate the Possible Causes

You can’t find an answer to your elderly family member’s difficulty with eating if you don’t know what’s causing the problem. There could be any number of potential causes ranging from health issues and medication side effects to loneliness and a changing sense of taste. Whether the causes are physical, emotional, administrative, or a combination, you must drill down into what is contributing to her trouble with food and eating.

Address Medical Concerns with Her Doctor

If you’re finding that any of these causes are medical, including dental issues, then you need to loop in her medical providers. That’s going to help address these concerns in the best possible ways so that your elderly family member can move on to addressing other issues. In some cases, your elderly family member and her doctor may have to do additional testing to get to the root of what’s happening.

Look for Other Solutions that Make Sense

What other factors are at play? Your elderly family member may not have the energy to cook for herself, for instance. Or she might not be as physically active as she used to be. Solutions that can help, like working with home care providers to do the cooking for her, may be necessary. If the trouble your senior is having involves physically having trouble eating, personal care at home can help immensely.

Avoid Making This Stressful

The last thing that you want to do is to add stress to this entire process. Making this situation more complicated or adding to your elderly family member’s stress levels is only going to make it all worse. What you want to do is to find answers that are soothing, comforting, and useful for your elderly family member.

Keep Your Senior Involved in the Conversation

It’s also important that you keep your aging family member involved in this conversation and in the process of solving the issues you’re uncovering. This is her life, so she needs to have a say in the solutions that are implemented. It can be difficult to accept help from personal care at home, for example, but it’s a lot easier for her to do when she’s actively engaging in these decisions as well instead of being told this is how the problem is going to be solved.

It’s never easy to watch your senior have trouble with basic tasks like eating. If this is happening with your senior, it’s not a failure on your part as her family caregiver and it’s not something that she’s doing to make life more complicated for everyone. There are things that you can try to help her, it just might require getting some outside assistance to get the right solution in place.

Source
https://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/features/maintaining-appetite

If you or an aging loved one is considering personal care at home in Billings, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390

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