Chicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence – Since 1991 • in home care for seniorsChicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence

Long COVID’s Long List of Symptoms
The COVID pandemic is not yet done with us in the United States, and the story certainly is different...
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February 7, 2023
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To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
No, this isn’t a refresher course on Shakespeare and the famous Hamlet soliloquy. (Spoiler Alert – Hamlet was ranting...
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January 2, 2023
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Why Mister Rogers Was Right
Mr. Rogers Told You…but were you listening? And it wasn’t just once that he shared the message; it was...
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August 2, 2022
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Why AND Is the Most Important Word
Do you recall the 1991 movie called City Slickers? It was another great role for Billy Crystal, but it...
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July 19, 2022
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Looking Out for Your Older Parent 24/7
There will come a time for everyone with an aging parent that the question will arise, “Is it still...
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July 11, 2022
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When Being in Demand Isn’t Healthy
If you’re a musician, you want to be busy, because gigs represent a better living. If you’re an actor...
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May 17, 2022
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Heavy Drinking Helps?
Let’s take a short quiz. Question: Who prefers coffee…and who prefers tea? Which is healthier for you? Answer: ...
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April 19, 2022
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Making Your Holidays Happy Again
Yes, “holidays” is a plural word here. Please allow me to digress on this plurality and simply point out...
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November 16, 2021
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Not Just Spring…
We’ve heard of Spring Training for those who follow baseball teams like the CUBS or the SOX, and we...
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April 13, 2021
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Can I Have A Hug?
I doubt there is anyone who does not have something that they have not been able to do during...
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March 4, 2021
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In the Caregiver's Words

Recent Client Praise

My mother used a phrase to put a good face on her moments of leisure. She would say: “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.” I have some bad news for my mother – sitting (thinking or not) too much is not good for your health or your life expectancy. I haven’t missed too many opportunities to talk up the virtues of exercise and diet in not just extending one’s life, but also improving the quality of life. Just when you think that your hearty breakfast this morning and your 60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise will assure your good health, think again. If you took the afternoon off to watch your screen or even read a book and the time spent on that couch over the course of the day totaled 6 or more hours, your chance of dying young just shot up 19 percent over your peers who sat for less than three hours. And the causes of these premature deaths are not limited to just heart issues. There is a whole range of conditions that can get in the way of longevity for couch potatoes. The conditions that can shorten a person’s life can include everything from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to diabetes or lung disease or kidney disease and more. And here’s the part where those of us who are caregivers to older loved ones should pay more attention; it is not just older individuals who run this risk if they sit too much. Researchers have compared transit drivers with transit conductors or prison guards and found that these occupational groups tended to have pretty similar diets and lifestyles. The drivers, they found, were twice as likely to die of a cardiac condition as their counterparts who spent more time on their feet. The scientists cannot claim a cause and effect, but they do point to higher rates of obesity tied to sedentary lifestyles. And the obesity is tied to higher levels of inflammation overall which leads to a host of diseases. But sedentary people also have higher rates of suicide, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s as well, and this leaves the researchers scratching their heads a bit. The basis for some of these conclusions is a 21 year long prevention study sponsored by the American Cancer Society. Of the 128,000 healthy volunteers who were enrolled in this study, 49,000 died during the succeeding two decades for the causes I have outlined. So, even though they cannot say that sitting kills people, my takeaway is pretty clear. No matter what your age, make it a point to stand up, stretch and walk around every hour and then rinse, repeat. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. She also is the co-author of How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia.
Happy Valentine’s Day…a couple days late. February is American Heart month, so why would I start by talking about your older loved one’s pancreas? Let’s start with the fact that one in four adults over age 65 develops diabetes. And although it is over-simplifying things a bit to say that type 2 diabetes is all about having too many sweets, there is a strong connection between consuming too many carbohydrates over one’s lifetime and developing type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, there also is a strong connection between diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But wait, it gets even scarier. The combined prevalence of prediabetes and diabetes – both undiagnosed and diagnosed, respectively – is estimated to be between 50% and 80% among older Americans. So, why does this affect the heart? Well, diabetes has a way of making a person’s blood a bit sticky. Well not literally sticky like gum on a sidewalk, but uncontrolled diabetes leaves more sugar floating in the bloodstream, and the sticky cells that have been tangled up with the blood sugar tend to block the smallest vessels in the cardiovascular system. The heart may pump blood through some very big arteries, but the muscle itself is made up of a lot of microvascular pathways that keep it fed and oxygenated. Once we add free sugar to the mix, some of those tiny vessels become clogged. The less well-controlled the diabetes is, the more sugar is roaming the cardiovascular highway, and the more blockage there is. No surprise then, that in excess of 70% of both men and women over age 60 have some level of cardiovascular disease. Now, we could go on about the damage to other microvascular regions of the human body like the kidneys or even the eyes and the feet and the hands, but the lesson is already clear. As we reflect on our past valentine’s day, go a bit lighter on the candy that may still remain in the box and a bit heavier on the love. Because in addition to hurting the little vessels of the heart, the excess chocolates that we cannot burn as energy for our bodies get stored. And you probably already see where this is going; the unused sugar gets converted to fat, and each pound of that unwanted baggage creates another mile of blood vessels. It is a bit crazy to think that we have to feed the fat, but every cell of the human anatomy is no more than one cell away from a supply of blood. So Valentine’s Day has to share the calendar with American Heart Month. And if we all do that, then maybe we can even consider renaming February as American All Around Healthy month? Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Professional and a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to info@creativecaremanagement.com.
This is the first in a series of posts on dementia in advance of the release of my new book, "How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia." It will be released in July through Family Solutions Press of Los Angeles and available from Amazon. We will keep you up to date on details. Count slowly from one to sixty-seven…one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…by the time you reach one thousand sixty-seven, one more person in the United States will have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, one in three Americans ultimately will die with Alzheimer’s disease. And when we interviewed nearly three dozen Professional Care Managers in 2016 and 2017 dementia was the most common issue they dealt with among their clients– more than 66% of their cases. There have been new diagnostic breakthroughs and some pharmacological, nutritional and other ways that have proposed to help slow the progression of this disease, but the fact is that they have no substantial or durable effect. Alzheimer’s remains the only disease in the top ten causes of death in the United States that cannot be prevented, cured or slowed. Dementia is a category that includes about 100 specific cognitive conditions. Generally speaking, most dementias are diagnoses of exclusion. That is medical talk for the fact that one narrows down what a person is manifesting by successive steps of eliminating other possible explanations for a behavior. For instance, a medical work-up when dementia is suspected will include a review of all the medications a patient may be taking. Some medications have a pronounced effect on a person’s memory, noteworthy among them most of the sleep aids such as diphenhydramine, or Benadryl. Yet, this typically results in memory lapses that will recede if the medication is stopped. Doctors now also talk about “risk factors” for dementia that they place into three major categories. The first they tie to “body composition.” Simply put, what physicians have noted is that people with more fatty tissue, or a higher Body Mass Index (BMI), is associated with more amyloid deposits on the brain, a precursor of Alzheimer’s. The second set of risk factors center on “inflammatory processes.” Increased blood levels of sugar and cholesterol are associated with higher risk of dementia as well as heart disease…something of a double hit. Finally physicians also look at how well a person scores on “cognitive tests.” Dementia often is thought of as forgetfulness, but it really is the inability to process information and make a retrievable memory. They have cognitive tests that can measure that, one of which they call the Mini-Mental Test. A person’s cognitive health also is enhanced by creative pass times like playing a musical instrument, taking adult education or actively engaging in stress reduction. In my book, we cover what we know about dementia, what can be done to stave off the effects of dementia and most importantly what caregivers can do for their loved ones with dementia and for themselves. Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago.
Well, first of all, the basics keep changing, but we try to regularly update you on what we know about the most common dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease. It is especially appropriate given that November is coming up; it’s Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. Alzheimer disease (AD) is not going to just go away. In fact, the estimates from the Alzheimer’s Association tell us that its prevalence will increase from the current 5+ million cases diagnosed in America today to as many as 16 million cases by 2050. Who will be in this category of 16 million people with diagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease? Well, age is still the big predictor with the prevalence among 82+ year olds being exceeding 40 percent. Alzheimer’s will also target those with a family history of the disease, women and people with the apolipoprotein E ε4 allele gene mutations. There are only four medications currently approved by the FDA that can slow the disease progression, but the effect is only modest and is not long-lasting. Later this month I’ll talk about some of the efforts at better diagnosis and even some steps toward prevention. The risk factors I already mentioned are the cards a person is dealt, but there are some factors over which people have some control. In order to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease: • Reduce carbohydrate intake as insulin resistance that results in type 2 diabetes also can increase the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease; • Obesity, hypertension and metabolic syndrome predispose people to Alzheimer’s; • Stress – especially psychological stress – and depression increase the risk; • Sleep apnea and other disorders that interfere with normal sleep also can trigger AD; • Alcohol and tobacco use are exacerbating factors of Alzheimer’s; • Circulatory issues that affect the heart or the kidneys increase Alzheimer’s risk; and • Sitting too much increases a person’s risk. So, yes, there are some risk factors that we really can do nothing about, but if you look at the bullet points here, there is a lot we all can do to minimize our risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease. These alone represent more than 50% of the risk that medical researchers calculate. As you have seen in our postings a number of times over the years, the two first lines of intervention that can affect any disease are diet and exercise. In some studies exercise has been shown to reduce Alzheimer’s risk by as much as 65%. Get up, get out and burn off the extra calories…and consider reducing portions while at the table. Research also points to mind-challenging games or pass times also help ward off the condition. Yes, do crossword puzzles, take classes, learn a new language, play a musical instrument or even just listen to music. Some researchers even talk about a person’s mind set when they encourage people to socially and physically engage, be mindful, be optimistic, have a purpose in life and just be active. In addition to reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease, you get the bonus of a better quality of life. Pretty good deal. In this post and throughout the National Alzheimer's Awareness month we will be offering a $10 discount off the retail price of our caregiver book on Alzheimer's Disease: "How Do I Know You? A Caregiver's Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia". If you would like $10 off the Amazon price, please follow this link. And enter the discount code - ZH3VK3U6. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago.
The mid-summer holiday – Independence Day - may be behind us, but the heat of the summer is upon us. If you have an older loved one in your orbit, you need to be aware that summer is more than just about sun screen among older adults. Their biologic thermostats do not work as efficiently as a younger person’s and that can mean real medical consequences from overheating. And if they have any medical conditions like hypertension, etc., it is even more important to protect them from the heat. First, be aware of the signs of overheating; it is more than the obvious thirst that all can feel. The signs can include sudden dizziness, nausea, headache, cramping, swelling in the ankles, lack of coordination or coherence and unusually cool or even clammy skin. Encourage your older loved one to follow some simple rules during the heat of the day … or the heat of the night when even sunset brings relief from the rays of the summer sun but not the residual heat.
- Avoid strenuous exercise midday to early evening. The added ten to twenty degrees that midday adds to the early morning can make a critical, deleterious difference. Encourage that daily walk during the morning or post-dinner hours.
- Drink plenty of fluids. The old rule of thumb has been eight glasses (eight ounce capacity) of water daily. Beware that drinking caffeinated beverages or liquor do not count as substitutes as they are diuretics and will actually remove fluid from the system.
- Shade helps. In the early or later parts of the day, the sun gives more shade as well as less direct heat. And when they have a choice, encourage your older loved one to walk on the shady side of a street. There will be a ten to twenty degree difference.
- Apply and reapply sunscreen. People can forget that sunscreen tends to “wear off.” Read the label for recommended intervals for reapplying sunscreen to avoid the harmful accumulation of rays to the skin. Sunscreen may not make a person cooler, but it will guard against the rays that can result in melanoma.
- Light colored clothes can make a difference in exposure to harmful UV rays and in body temperature. Ever notice that tropical clothing tends toward the lighter side of the spectrum? There is a good reason; it helps protect the body from the sun’s assault.
So, as we all enjoy the summer blooms and even a day at the beach, help protect your older loved ones…and yourself. And have a tall, cool drink of water for good measure. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Professional and a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to info@creativecaremanagement.com.
“A friend told me how valuable the information [that Charlotte gave her] was!”
Catharine J. Jones, Diplomate Analytical Psychoanalyst