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What “Senior Real Estate Specialists” Do
I have posted a number of times on how to make home safer as well as how to evaluate...
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September 4, 2013
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Caregivers Cannot Ask Doctors This Question
I have talked in a lot of my postings about advanced directives and how we all need to prepare...
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August 15, 2013
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Geriatric Care Management Services for Renting
I have talked in the past about making home safer for seniors as well as geriatric care management services...
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May 28, 2013
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In the Caregiver's Words

Recent Client Praise

The next time anyone tells your older loved one to take it easy, be sure to clarify that taking it easy does not mean just sitting around. Medical research has begun to document that too much sedentary time is bad for one’s health. It leads to obesity, elevated blood pressure, elevated blood sugar and metabolic syndrome, and all of these lead to cardiovascular disease and even cancer. Researchers compared the health of adults who spent less than two hours a day in front of a television or other screen format versus those who spent four hours or more as the proverbial couch potatoes. Those who spent more screen time had dramatically elevated risk for cardiovascular events like heart attacks as well as death from any cause. Screen time is simply unhealthy. It may be no surprise why some are calling sitting the new smoking, likening it to the health risk of cigarettes. For any of you who are caregivers to an older loved one, this health risk is particularly worrisome, because older adults risk being isolated as they age. The 2010 U.S. Census found that 28% of people 65 years of age and older, or about 11 million people, lived alone. Granted, living alone does not automatically mean a person will be isolated, but it makes it easier to slip into that rut. Older adults outlive their friends with whom they have socialized in the past, and they may be less able to get out and walk or drive themselves to social events. They may resign themselves to just sitting and taking in the only seemingly accessible entertainment available – the screen. In fairness, we cannot tie all of this to television; any prolonged sedentary activities such as reading, sewing or knitting also can be a risk to the sitter. The same researchers who did the study of the health consequences of sitting offered some advice you can pass along to your older loved one:
- Encourage standing over sitting for small tasks like a phone call or even lunch.
- Use a higher counter so paying the bills can be a standing task.
- For social visits, consider walking and talking rather than sitting and talking.
And there are a lot more benefits; people who sit less are less inclined to depression, cognitive decline and dementia. Your more active, older loved one also will be less likely to be a target of elder abuse and less likely to need long term care. So, a lot less sitting and a lot more of everything else. 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@creativecaremanagement.com.
We all hear the phrase used as an excuse for a bit of memory lapse … that it’s just a “senior moment.” It doesn’t seem to be ageist, because in older adult communities the phrase gets tossed around about as frequently as “hello” or “goodbye.” But it’s wrong. This time of COVID places us all at risk for the “Memory Moments,” because they’re not caused by age. Yes, short term recall issues are something to which we all are susceptible, but they are not caused by age. Memory issues like dementia are not caused by age; they have organic causes. There are steps we all can take to stay more mentally sharp no matter our age and despite COVID. During this time of sustained pandemic quarantine – for those of you following the state and local mandates, that is – memory lapses can seem to become more common. Even these “COVID moments” are not inevitable, however, if you keep your mind engaged and active. Here are six tips to help fend off the cognitive impact of COVID 19:
1. Do Something New – We all have heard about “lifelong learning” as it may describe someone who seems always to be pursuing new knowledge, a new language or a new craft. Your brain still has a lot of room to expand what you know, so keep at it.
2. Don’t Cram – Just like the tests when you were back in school, the best learning cannot happen the night before the exam. Spread your learning of a new language or a new musical instrument over a number of sittings and days, and it will more effectively take root.
3. One More Time – The learning takes place over time, and you need to go over the same ground over and over. Repetition is important so that the new language you’re studying becomes like a new habit.
4. More Senses Make More Sense – When you are working a new recipe in the kitchen, you learn by reading, tasting, smelling, touching, etc. With learning a language, you learn by seeing, hearing, writing, saying, and so on. Use as many senses as you can to maximize your cognitive process.
5. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff – It’s okay to let your devices or your habits free up your brain to work on the new things you want to learn. Make a written list of your “to do’s.” It will free up the brain space to actually determine how to do what you want to get done.
6. Yes You Can – Don’t ever call it your “senior moment,” because that means you have lost confidence in you. While you are practicing what you wish to learn, practice having confidence in your learning. If you don’t believe in a “senior moment,” you are far less likely to have one.
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.
Once every 67 seconds. Every 67 seconds someone in the United States develops Alzheimer's Disease, and among the adults over age 65 in the U.S. about one in nine have the condition. That is about five million older adults, one in ten of whom will die from this disease each year. There are about three caregivers for every one of the older adults with Alzheimer's Disease, and they provide about 17.7 billion uncompensated hours of care each year. But there is help for those with Alzheimer's and their caregivers. As a professional geriatric care manager, I am certified and a member in good standing of the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers. Earlier this month they did what they are calling an "InstaPoll" of those of us who are members. The results from the poll of we care managers, it turns out, offers some very practical advice from those of us who work with clients with this condition every day. The feedback from the nearly 300 NAPGCM members who responded to the poll distill down into six recommendations for caregivers:
1. The most common recommendation revolves around the fact that dementia develops in stages, and that is important that a caregiver be attuned to the capabilities that a person with AD will retain versus lose so that communication is appropriate.
2. Test for a response to such communications as reminiscing. If the care receiver responds positively to talking about the past and long term memories, it can be very positive and affirming to break out the scrap books and memory boxes.
3. To guard against social isolation, try to keep up the old routines and engagements as your care receiver enjoyed before. With less social engagement comes the risk for depression and even further isolation.
4. For those of you who may have raised children, the game of "Mommy and daddy always come back" was important at a young age. It will be that way also with some AD patients for whom an absent caregiver is just gone. Reassurance is key.
5. Don't rush with change, especially the disruption of moving to a new residence. While it is important that an AD patient be secure from wandering, it also is important they be given time to adjust to the concept and an upheaval of house and home.
6. Where there is loss, especially that of a spouse, it is important that a care giver monitor the AD patient for signs that the stress is overwhelming. Their capacity for processing grief will be compromised by the Alzheimer's.
If you would like more information on NAPGCM's InstaPoll or on professional care manager advice as well as a care manager locator, just go to our association's web site: http://www.caremanager.org . 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.
April 22 is Earth Day, a date that has brought together activists and celebrants since its inception in 1970. The really nice synergy with people “of an age” is that you and we know to what the first days of the movement responded and what has improved since then. Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, was first published in 1962 and sounded an alarm about the toxicity of DDT specifically, but also about what civilization was doing to harm the planet. The book resonated with the many people who were moved to become activists, and President Nixon responded by pushing for the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. What can you do today?
1. Since those of us who were part of that initial response to the call to arms can recall the call to arms and the urgency of environmental protection, we can share our legacies with our children and grandchildren…Those of us who were there then. Buy a copy of Silent Spring for the younger generations or talk to them about your own social activism.
2. You don’t have to be a 21^st century eco-activist to simply revel in the green that comes with Spring. It’s not just the verdant colors that are now surrounding us. It’s the bouquets and bird songs of Spring. Enjoy!
3. Make a specific Earth Day resolution this year. Add one more sustainable habit to your repertoire as we continue to face the onslaught of plastic pollution as well as the forever chemicals, PFAs, that invisibly are infiltrating our drinking water and food sources.
4. Increase your advocacy through causes that you can support with your dollars or your time. Plan a gathering of family or friends where everything that folks bring to your party must be reusable, recyclable or compostable.
5. Make your past experiences learning opportunities and teachable moments for the younger generations with whom you interact. And set a great example by showing them instead of simply telling them how to assure a sustainable environment for future generations.
Now, go out for a breath of fresh air (O2 created by the green plants coming into bloom), and when you exhale know that you’re returning the favor to the plants that count on you and your CO2! Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Retirement Lifestyle Coach and founder of Creative Care Management, LLC, 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.
Medicine today is full of miracles. But Aging Well magazine (Jan/Feb, 2009) reports that although the over 65 set in America constitute only about 13% of the population they account for about 30% of all prescriptions filled. Their share of over the counter (OTC) drugs is estimated to be closer to 40%-50% of all retail meds sold. The report goes on to say that nearly two in five hospitalizations each year are a result of medication issues associated with elders. The elderly are fully half of all prescription drug-related deaths annually.

Let me tell you about a list you should know about. If some drugs have added baggage beyond the healthy effect sought by a prescriber and a patient, a doctor named Mark Beers, MD, and his associates have been the “baggage handlers” since 1991. That is when they first came out with the “Beers List.” Beers and his associates were concerned that certain commonly prescribed as well as OTC drugs were causing what are referred to as adverse drug events (ADEs, sometimes shortened to just AEs). Beers, a doctor specializing in geriatric care, found that the elderly were particularly susceptible to many of the undesirable effects of these drugs because their older bodies tend to have less water content and more fat content than younger individuals. This, coupled with their bodies’ diminished efficiency in metabolizing or processing chemicals through their systems helped to account for the disproportionately high rate of AEs and associated hospitalizations and deaths among the old.

Beers' most recent list of 48 drugs and drug classes has been published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and has been embraced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Beers and his associates have established a set of criteria for determining if a drug poses a risk, that is, is it a potentially inappropriate medication (PIM) for the elderly. Using an expert panel of internationally-recognized experts, Beers and associates were able to find consensus on the drugs that are part of their list of potentially-hazardous medications. It is an important elder resource you should know.

The Beers list has a number of “old friends” as well as exotic medications of which most of us have never heard. You will find the likes of over the counter Naprosyn or Aleve (generically known as naproxen sodium) as well as Benadryl (diphenhydramine) and Chlor-Trimeton (chlorpheiramene). There are also household names like Valium (diazepam), Tagamet (cimetidine) and Prozac (fluoxetine). It is important not to take the Beers list as a blanket generalization that these are simply drugs to avoid. It is not quite that black and white. Some agents are on the list because they can cause complications among specific groups such as diabetics, asthmatics, or insomniacs. Others are contra-indicated for individuals with balance or gait problems because they become prone to falls, some for individuals who have bladder outflow compromise or still others who suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema.

The list goes on, and in some cases it is simply a dosage or extended release formulation warning that justifies being included on the list. Check it out: Beers List

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 throughout metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to Charlotte Bishop.
I have shared this statistic before, but in America someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease every 67 seconds. And Alzheimer’s is just one of the approximately one hundred types of dementia. Scientists do not have a cure for any of the dementias yet, and even the medications that are indicated for Alzheimer’s are only modestly effective in slowing the progression of this condition. But scientists are getting more and more data every year on the conditions or genetics that help to predict a person’s likelihood of manifesting some form of dementia. From physicians in London we learned recently that air pollution and dementia are linked. Among older residents across areas of London, these scientists found that those who lived in parts of the sprawling metropolis whose air was more polluted residents were more likely to be diagnosed with dementia. This adds to what researchers have been finding for years about polluted air contributing to cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disorders and even some kinds of cancer. It’s traffic pollution, manufacturer exhaust and other airborne byproducts of urban living. The researchers admit that preexisting levels of air pollution and subsequent diagnoses of dementia are not sufficient grounds for establishing causation of the latter by the former. They are one more reason, however, to underscore the need to minimize humans’ exposure to air pollution. The researchers calibrated the association between air pollution and dementia diagnoses by tracking individuals and their postal codes. Nitrogen dioxide and ozone levels in these post codes, in turn, were measured starting back in 2004. Patients’ health data confirmed the dementia diagnoses from records forward to 2013, and the statistical association was confirmed. They tracked both Alzheimer’s and vascular dementias (the Alzheimer’s was more common). The relationship between Alzheimer’s and pollution was more consistent that with vascular dementia, but both were statistically significant. The scientists admit that some of the findings may be specific to London, but similar findings have seen corroboration in Canadian research. And it seems unlikely that this is specific to just Commonwealth nations… What can one do? Scientists offer two recommendations, and I offer a third:
1. Where possible avoid heavily trafficked areas during rush hours, and avoid being outside during rush hours.
2. If possible, reside in locales away from traffic and industry to avoid the prolonged exposure to pollutants that location represents.
…and my third:
1. Vote for policy makers who will work to tighten air pollution standards.
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.

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What “Senior Real Estate Specialists” Do

Caregivers Cannot Ask Doctors This Question

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