Chicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence – Since 1991 • geriatric care manager ChicagoChicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence - Since 1991 | Page 4

Tech Support for Caregivers
Caregiving in this century is not just handholding; it combines the latest technologies with caring to allow virtually anyone to...
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February 22, 2011
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Take It To Heart – Chocolate That Is
Okay, so it has been five days since you received that box of chocolates from your sweetheart on Valentine’s...
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February 18, 2011
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Obesity and Aging
As a geriatric care manager, I speak with my older clients who wrestle with weight gain as much as...
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February 9, 2011
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Saying Goodbye to a Loved One
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced her five steps of grieving for a loved one who has died four decades ago in...
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February 1, 2011
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Finding Caregiver Resources
In the past two postings I have been talking about the warning signs of caregiver burnout as well as...
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January 27, 2011
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An Elder Resource for Caregivers
One of my clients recommended a web resource recently, and I am so impressed by it that I am...
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January 7, 2011
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Changing Your Elder’s Mind – for the Better
Dr. Oliver Sacks explains neuroplasticity in his editorial, “This Year, Change Your Mind,” in the New Year’s Day editorial...
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January 1, 2011
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Elder Resources – Free Legal Advice
I have been hearing that the web resources I have been offering in my postings have been informative and...
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December 30, 2010
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If Not Home, Then What?
In my last posting, I talked about how a caregiver can facilitate an older adult’s decision around when it...
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December 20, 2010
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Who Owns the Decision?
I have talked in some of the recent blogs about when decision-making may transfer to another person from an...
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December 15, 2010
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In the Caregiver's Words

Recent Client Praise

You may recall that I have recommended limiting your news consumption, because it really does add to our stressed feelings? Well, it also can give us a “wrong perspective” on our own family and what should be done to protect our older loved ones during this COVID-19 crisis. Translated, that means simply that we can be informed globally, but we need to respond locally (click here for what is going on in your locale). You have seen that most governors have plans for relaxing the quarantine that are tailored to specific regions with in the states. If you have an older loved one receiving care from a home care or home health agency or you currently are looking for in-home care, here are some tips on what to look for in caregivers for your older loved one. To be reassured that they will give the best care to your loved one, it’s time to up your game with:
1. Ask what extra precautions the agency is taking. The agency probably has posted on-line what they are now doing during a time of COVID, but you need to also ask about the actual caregivers to your older loved one…health screenings, protective equipment, sanitation, etc.
2. Ask what is needed right now and what can wait. You may have seen that hospitals have postponed all “nonessential procedures.” Well, you should do the same for your loved one. To fully benefit from social distancing, it may be important to cut back on all nonessential services or interpersonal activities.
3. Ask about technology. A lot of what has been face to face or person to person can be supplemented or replaced by health apps, phone calls, email or ZOOM meetings. Even doctor’s visits are embracing telemedicine.
4. Ask also about your own care plan which may be picking up a fair bit of what an agency had done on behalf of your loved one. For your overall plan:
  - Be sure to have a list of your loved one’s medications and schedules,
  - Make sure your loved one has at least a 30 day supply of meds,
  - Facial tissues and toilet paper should be stocked as well as groceries and other items used around the house,
  - Compile a contact list in case of emergencies – all providers, family, etc.,
  - Have a fallback to the caregiver for your loved one if the caregiver becomes ill, and
  - Monitor all of this, even if at distance. Better to be overstocked than run out.
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.
To answer your first question, Fisetin (pronounced fy-set-in) is a flavonol which is a class of flavonoids found in a number of plants and fruits or vegetables. They are antioxidants, and you may have seen some of the research on the flavonols in chocolate that are thought to help patients with mild cognitive impairment. Some other common sources of flavonols are onions, kale, lettuce, tomato, grapes, berries, tea and red wine. One of the rules of thumb is the greener the leaf, the more of the flavonols the plant will contain. Back to fisetin. Some researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have published some scientific work based on animal studies that show promise for fisetin's ability to protect the brain's memory from the inexorable degradation of Alzheimer's disease. They have done this in mice, and the scientists think that fisetin has a neuroprotective capability that helps the memories of mice in laboratory tests. The clinical test used three groups of mice. Two groups consisted of what are termed double-transgenic Alzheimer's disease (AD) mice. The third group was the control, and these mice did not have the Alzheimer's transgene. Mice in one of the first two groups were fed fisetin at three months of age until they were nine months old. The other group received no fisetin. Scientists use a water maze as a standard test of mouse learning and memory. The mice without the fisetin did not perform well in the mazes. Those who had been fed the fisetin, however, performed as well as the mice in the control group. Tests were repeated again at 12 months of age, and the results were very much the same with the fisetin mice doing as well as the control mice. Researchers are not prepared to jump immediately into human subject trials, but there is work underway to better understand at the molecular level how fisetin may be working on mouse brains. Ever hopeful, the scientists are also investigating whether fisetin offers any hope of actually reversing the neuro-degradation of AD. What do we take away from this research? Well, animal studies cannot provide a sound rationale for all caregivers to go out and stock up on fisetin rich foods to help an older loved one forestall Alzheimer's progression. But is it a good idea to encourage your older loved one to consume foods rich in antioxidants? probably yes, but as with any dietary, activity or medication change, always consult with your loved one's provider. 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. Please email your questions to info@cr eativecaremanagement.com.
Chicago Home Care Service Experts
When looking for Home Care service in Chicago area for an elderly loved one, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and vulnerable. That is where Creative Care Management comes in. We work with you to completely understand your elder loved one’s needs and then manage the process of selecting and placing your loved one with the right kind of care from a reliable and trustworthy provider.
Finding the Right In-Home Care
Our four step process allows us to guide you from our first meeting to the continued monitoring of your loved one’s in-home care, by developing a thorough Home Care Management plan that is unique to your specific caregiving needs.
Step One: Meeting and Assessment
Everything starts with a meeting. By establishing a personal connection during our initial meeting, we aim to fully understand your concerns. We conduct an assessment of the physical, mental and social health of your loved one to determine the ideal type of elder care service at the moment.
Step Two: Creating a Home Care Plan
Based on our assessment, we work with you to collectively develop a Home Care Management plan that covers everything from the type of care provider required to preparing for changes that may occur in the future.
Step Three: Setting the Plan in Action
When we recommend a care provider, we only offer the best. We hold our providers to the highest standards in regard to responsiveness to a client’s needs, consistent quality of service and level of training and certification required of the provider’s employees. We provide recommendations for a wide range of in-home care options including, but not limited to:

Home companion

LPN (licensed practical nurse)/LVN (licensed vocational nurse)/ CNA (certified nurse’s assistant)

Live-in caregiver

Step Four: Overseeing The Plan
As in-home care is an ongoing process, the Home Care Management plan includes our continued involvement and oversight in the care of your loved one. When conditions and needs change, we will be there to help with any necessary adjustments to the plan. If you are concerned for a loved one, but feel overwhelmed tackling caregiving on your own, our geriatric care services are exactly what you need to lift that weight from your shoulders. Contact us today for a free initial consultation.
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Recent Client Praise

It ended with almost uncontrollable laughing. That’s how one of our team describes his conversation with his mother about making her funeral plans one day not long ago. Yes, you heard that right…they talked about her memorial service and had a great laugh together. My take on that is that once the incredible stress around a topic that no one wants to talk about is addressed, the relief is almost giddy. We laughed too when he relayed the part about Googling funeral hymns and singing along with his mom the ones she particularly liked. Trust me; this is not a unique story, and it is only one of the “difficult conversations” families can have. According to AARP, 70 percent of Americans say they feel that it is important to have an end of life conversation with their family members, but only 30 percent have had that conversation. The younger generation in the family may not hear the conversations that older adults have among themselves about death and dying, and parents may not want to “burden” their adult children with talk of end of life. But that will not change the fact that death is a universal event for all of us. If you are that adult child who would like to help your parent with the conversation, there are some ways to “break the ice” in order to have a productive conversation. First, you don’t have to start with end of life questions; you can start with some of the more mundane issues about health or medical issues. Every professional painter will tell you that there is a whole lot of prep work before they even put the brush to the paint. Start with mentioning perhaps a friend whose parent had a medical episode, and the adult children were not even aware that their parent had a problem with their (fill in the blank…heart, lungs, etc.). So those same children could not even supply their parent’s physician’s name or the medications they were taking or any of the other details that the paramedics or emergency room personnel had asked. Or you may even point out that your significant other has all the details on your medical health “just in case.” Would your parent also wish to have you in the know about their health…just in case? And there may be certain circumstances…

Mom, if your medical professional makes any kind of new diagnosis, do you want to know every detail, treatment options, prognosis, or just the big picture stuff?

Dad, if the doctors have treatment options for a condition, do you want to know all the details, or just what your doctor recommends?

And there are some issues that can be clearly laid out in documents for the medical record. Called POLST in Illinois (Practitioner Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment), it is considered a legal document that becomes part of a patient’s permanent record which states what kind of measures they wish to have applied in emergency situations. It is more than a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order; it covers the extent to which medical professionals should work to sustain them in an emergency. The Illinois site for this legal document also has suggestions for how to have the conversation. Obviously, the conversation can get into details like the one I started this post with, but it may not be the first conversation. We as Geriatric Care Managers also get the call to help families cover these kinds of issues, and we have made this into a form called the Life Span Care Plan(SM). 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.
With all the talk of risk mitigation amid this COVID pandemic, home improvement may seem low on your list of things to do. But after we all have self-quarantined, maintained our “physical distance” (I don’t call it “social” distancing.) and stocked up on comfort food, please allow me to give you five insights into getting through this and coming out of this a better, more balanced and healthy person.

Start with You – It is not time to slink into the recliner chair with the remote in one hand and a bag of chips in the other. Take stock of what you eat, what you drink, how you exercise and how you are sleeping. Then choose one area for self-improvement, set a goal and work on it. Then another…all of these steps that make a better you will also protect you from a virus.

Reduce Stress – I know, easy to say, hard to do. Stress may have made our ancestors effective in defending themselves against predators, but they burn up our systems if we get stuck on “high alert.” There actually is a special web site designed around how to calm ourselves about COVID-19.

Socially Close while Physically Distant – I talked in an earlier post about ZOOM meetings with people who are important like family, friends and folks who just are isolated themselves. This last is important, because it can help us receive the calming benefit of extending our own empathy. (Key is to ask a lot of questions instead of “dumping” about ourselves.)

Use the Timer – This is not for the perfect three-minute egg, but for setting what I used to call with my kids “loving limits.” You may have your favorite newscaster or channel, but there is too much bad news if you let yourself get sucked into the endless news cycles. Use your Egg Timer or your app: 30 minutes is a good limit…and stick with it.

Attitude of Gratitude – I know it seems rather cliché, but you cannot tell the important people in your lives too many times just how important they are. You cannot stop to smell too many roses (I know I am rushing that season). You would be amazed at how cordial strangers can be if you extend the first courtesy.

We at CCM want you all to remain safe and follow the rules so that you all will get through this health crisis. And if you follow as many of these guidelines as you can fit into your day, you will be better coming out of this pandemic than you were going into it. Be safe and be healthier. 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.
Because it is the holiday season, we’ve talked a lot about how to overcome stress in various forms. This is due to the fact that stress isn’t just something to take lightly – it can have real health effects, especially for older loved ones and caregivers. During this time of the year, stress can be combined with sadness and nostalgia as we’ve discussed previously. So here are some more tips for seniors, caregivers, and loved ones for tackling stress.

Staying active. Endorphins can be a powerful thing. The more you move, the more endorphins you’ll produce and the better you’ll feel. So take every opportunity you can to walk, run, or participate in other physical activities if you’re able. Consider it a free boost of positive energy.

Talking with someone. You may feel better if you’re able to sharing your anxieties with someone you trust. For some, this does wonders for being able to process all of the many tasks and concerns passing through a busy mind. You and that other person may be able to work out solutions too.

Participate in other Activities. For caregivers, if you find yourself working all the time without doing anything that you enjoy – it may want to consider ways in which you can use some of your time to do something you like. For seniors and other loved ones, volunteering may be a good way to alleviate stress.

Keep yourself organized. One of the biggest causes of stress may be disorganization. If you have a good handle with the little things in your life, it is easier to shift attention towards the big things – which may not be as overwhelming.

It is also helpful to avoid your stressors for a while. In combination with tip 3, you may simply need to take a break. For a caregiver, it might mean taking a day off. For seniors, it may be spending time away from the grandchildren. For other loved ones, it could mean something completely different.

Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Case 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 ccbishop@creativecasemanagement.com.

There are those who have not seen any changes in their lives in the midst of this pandemic and quarantine. They’re our older family members with Alzheimer’s disease or some other form of dementia that has robbed them of the ability to even comprehend the restrictions of this pandemic. They have been isolated as protection against COVID, but their quarantine experiences are not the same as ours. I bring this up because as more of us are able to be vaccinated and resume some semblance of life before the pandemic we also will likely be able once again to visit Mom or dad who have been under strict quarantine and may have some questions for us. How you answer their questions and engage in conversations in general is necessarily going to be more about them than it will be about you and the rest of the world that has been upended. Honesty is going to be the first casualty of the pandemic when we encounter a loved one who has Alzheimer’s or dementia, but I am not talking about lying. At its core dementia is a progressive decline of the brain’s ability to process what has happened in “their world.” You ought not view your initial reunions with older loved ones with dementia as a “chance to catchup.” We have to be prepared to join their reality using a technique health care professionals call “therapeutic fibbing.” You will need to learn to “go along” with the reality they know by first asking them about themselves, their recent experiences, and what’s going on. This may go against how we all were raised, but telling the truth may be cruel to someone who is not processing reality in the same way we are. An example helps. Picture you’re talking once again with your mother who asks where your Dad is. He had told her, she recounts, that he was going to get the car and come by to pick her up for an outing. The unfortunate truth is that dad died last year, but she keeps coming back to scenarios in which he is just temporarily gone, and understandably is looking for his return. You don’t tell her he died, because she will experience the awful loss all over again, she’ll cry hysterically and become agitated. And since she has short term memory issues she will forget again so she will be primed for experiencing the grief anew the next time you correct her. Instead you might say that Dad suggested he would be delayed a bit and that he had asked you to offer her a snack until he can make it back. She agrees that a snack is a good idea and you get into another conversation. Or, your father with dementia tells you that he is going to go get the car and take mom for a ride. They like their Sunday afternoon drives…it does not have to even be Sunday. So, maybe you can ask how the car is running and suggest it would be nice to have a snack with him for their ride. While you prepare the snack perhaps look out the window and remark on the sunshine or the birds or anything. Then start talking about the view and ask him questions. Share the snack with him and get into a new conversation. My clients with parents or spouses with dementia talk about their “therapeutic fibbing” as really hard at first until they can see their loved one actually brightening with the diversions. And once they both have a brighter conversation, they both have now had a better day. And tomorrow will be another chance to brighten both of their days…and tomorrow…and tomorrow. 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.

The holidays have gone by in a great rush, but you may have noticed someone in your orbit who seems a bit down during these past days and beyond. We have all heard somebody comment that New Year's or Chanukah or Christmas are hard because that is when a mother or a father or other loved one died. And it becomes a poignantly sad moment when that date on the calendar rolls around each year.

It has been my experience that it does not even have to be a specific date that can bring a spouse who has lost their partner or a caregiver who has lost the individual for whom they cared down. It is the memory of holidays with that person who is no longer here to share in festivities. This makes the time of year particularly hard. And if it is the first Christmas or the first New Year's or any other "first," it can be all the more difficult.

Not everyone will be willing to share the sources of their holiday sadness with others, but you can be alert to some of the common signs:

1.    Sadness that just seems to settle in. Everyone has the occasional bad day. This sadness will be over an extended time, and you may notice the deep sighs as your loved one tries to break the hold that the reminder of loss can inflict.

2.    Fatigue that sleep does not cure. You may notice that your loved one who is mourning a loss may fall asleep easily, retire earlier or rise later than usual; yet they never seem to be refreshed.

3.    Preoccupation when engaged in conversation. You might need to repeat yourself. You may notice that faraway look – as if they are lost in thought. They are.

4.    Forgetfulness or absent-mindedness. Again, it may be distraction about items on their list of things to do that fade into the background, because they are caught up in the sadness of their memories.

            The single best thing a friend can do for these seasonal lapses is to empathize. You don't need to be their analyst, but you can validate their feelings of sadness. You can also ask about what in particular makes the holiday sad for them. It can be helpful to ask about any special, positive memories or experiences they can recount of their lost loved one. Recalling the positive is not intended to convey that they ought not be sad as much as to give the person an opportunity to balance the context within which they remember their loved one.

            Even good memories may not be enough to offset the blues. If you find that this melancholy lingers well beyond the holidays that now are past, encourage your friend or loved one to seek some help. Their primary care physician may be a starting point or even a clergy member if they belong to an organized religion. Crying can sometimes get one's sadness out and talking can do the same. It helps to lift the weight that some carry through the holidays.

      Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Case 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 ccbishop@creativecasemanagement.com.

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This whole idea to write up a legal document to give surviving loved ones clarity about how to take care of a person’s estate after one dies goes back to the ancient Greeks and later the Romans. Yet, there are people who put it off and put it off … and in the end the deceased person’s loved ones are left to their own devices to determine what mom or dad or whomever “would have wanted.” Doesn’t seem easy for the surviving loved ones, does it? Yet, an estimated 68% of Americans have no “last will and testament” to guide their survivors. The practical fact is a lot of folks…perhaps all of that 68%...are just overwhelmed by the prospect of systematically sorting who will get what, or how much or when. Or some folks may not feel that they want to spend the legal fees on someone who will draw up a will for them. And there are some among us who just don’t want to so tangibly address their own mortality. This may sound a bit odd, but there actually is a month designated as “National Make a Will Month,” and yes, that month just happens to be August. I won’t get into that whole mortality conversation with this last question about our own mortality, but there are ways to more easily address the first two potential objections to writing a will. A National Foundation called the Center for Science in the Public Interest has a web site that can walk through a legitimate and legal document that checks all the boxes. And they have a catchy name for this site; It’s simply called Free Will. They claim that it can take as little as 20 minutes to write a legally-binding “last will and testament,” and it’s available to everyone who is at least 18 years of age and that you agree to the terms of services on the web site. And they are very good about explaining all sorts of issues that we don’t often associate with this somber document, like how to donate stocks or how to donate cryptocurrency and much more. Their Blog is quite practical and useful covering definitions of all the legal language that most of us don’t speak even if we’ve had a few semesters of Latin. Their leading post is very helpful if you are going to share this site with that person in your personal orbit who has all manner of excuses for not taking the step toward writing a will. Let’s face it. Having a will is the only way to assure that the people whom you want to have an item or an asset that has been special to you actually do receive it…and those whom you don’t want getting their hands on your special something simply won’t. Now that I’ve got your attention, please answer the questions on what else you would like to know about life’s documents that prepare you AND your loved ones for, well, everything. Living Wills, Power of Attorney for Health, Power of Attorney for Finance, etc. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Geriatric Care Manager and founder of, 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.
Would you look for advice from an investment counselor who simply promised a lower rate of loss on your investments? Would you buy the car that promised mileage not as bad as some of the others? Well, we have been told until well into the 1990s that the number of brain cells we have is pretty well fixed post-adolescence, so it would have seemed that anything we can do in the way of brain help is the equivalent of less loss. The story starts with some information you may not have heard. We all have heard of the “gray matter” of the brain which is the neurons that create and hold our memories…our interactive scrap books. We don’t hear as much about the connective brain tissue called white matter, or axons, a fragile network that can be prone to thinning or atrophy over time. This latter part is the wiring of the brain, and it was considered to be a fixed asset of the brain…it was assumed it didn’t grow and probably was prone to some amount of wearing down over time, much like our cities’ infrastructure…the wires begin to wear out with age. Scientists have found within the past decades that not only can our brains produce more neurons over time, but also more axons to connect the neurons even as we age. A team of neuroscientists at Colorado State University has focused recently on the white matter among 60+ year old subjects finding that it can grow and remold itself…especially among physically-active people. In their study they divided these “older” volunteers into three groups assigned to supervised programs of stretching and balance (yoga), brisk walking or dancing. They were all tested at baseline for aerobic fitness and they received MRI scans of their brains. At the end of six months the dancers and walkers not surprisingly were more aerobically fit. As the scientists examined the brain scans, they found that one group stood out with renewed white matter, some parts of the brain even larger and any tissue lesions on the white matter that had earlier been detected were smaller now. Dancers and walkers showed the most benefit, but even within these two groups the walkers were clearly the leaders in their axon health. And at the other end of the exercise continuum, the yoga group, showed more thinning and more lesions in their white matter. These findings were supported by cognitive tests which were generally consistent with the aerobic fitness results showing better results with the walkers. More work still needs to be conducted among larger samples and more age diverse groups of people. At the very least, however, the science to date shows that we all will benefit by getting up and moving. Put on the miles and your brain and legs will repay you with better health…physical and mental. Your white matter…well…matters! Charlotte Bishop is a Caregiver Coach, an Aging Life Care Advisor, 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. She also is the co-author of How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia.
Miss your friends, your older loved ones and those summer get togethers in the backyard? We can get together at distance with friends and family in manageable numbers while maintaining distance, but there is no chatting around the water cooler or dropping by the grandparents or social hour at a local establishment like there once was. All of that is mostly lost, at least if you’ve been following the guidelines, and the isolation you and your older loved ones feel is not unique. Odd to talk about isolation and then offer that you are not alone, but… Research is showing that strangers may be every bit as important to your emotional well-being and your older loved ones’ well-being as the friends that you all may now be missing. If you’re like a lot of folks, you are walking more, perhaps with a dog in tow. Or you many be shopping for groceries in the less crowded grocery stores. Or you may be at home to have the mail delivered as your retired parents are and meet the letter carrier or the delivery person from those on-line purchases we all have been making in greater number. I am not exactly an extrovert, but I always make it a point to at least say hello to all of these people with whom I have casual contact. And my husband, the extrovert in the family, may spend minutes chatting up a neighbor we had not met until the recent months or the person from the pizza parlor who delivered tonight’s guilty pleasure or someone eight blocks from home on his long walks with our now physically fit dog. Well, those casual encounters may be helping his and my mental health in a way that we used to think only close friends or confidents could according to a book I came across. The book, titled “Consequential Strangers,” is co-authored by a psychologist and a science reporter who analyzed the importance of those “weak ties” that we all have on a daily basis. In fact, the authors contend, those strangers are as important as family in best friends in giving us a strong grounding in the world. And the authors further point out that the more ties we have with “consequential strangers” the less likely one is to become depressed. Some of the benefits also include better sleep patterns, more productive work effort and just about all of those parts of daily living we value. To truly be healthier during this extended break from normal, ask strangers how they are faring…and then how their family’s health is…and maybe what they have been bingeing lately. You will have primed the pump for your better health. Now, do the same for your older family members and friends and you are passing it forward. Remember, we all will get through this, and we will get through it in much better shape if we hold our strangers closer. 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.