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According to the Population Reference Bureau, the number of American seniors projects to at least double by 2060. Although many people resist the changes that occur with every birthday, getting older is a privilege. We often ignore the benefits of maturing, but this “third age” can be one of the most fulfilling times in your life.
What Is Gerotranscendence Theory?
Gerotranscendence theory was developed by gerontologist Lars Tornstam to dig deeper into the vital components of human elderhood. Tornstam posits that even though many of us view the side effects of getting older as a type of decline, we become more whole in the way that we experience the world.
The theory of aging says that we recreate our sense of self in our later years. Just because we look, feel and behave differently when we’re 80 than we did at 50, it doesn’t mean that we’re any less whole.
In fact, as we transcend into maturity, we become less preoccupied with our egos and more connected with the world. This transcendence can help us relinquish our fears of death and merge into an idea of communal human existence as we near the end of our lives.
While many people see the effects of getting older as problematic, Tornstam explains that the general perspective, not the typical behaviors of older adults, could be the problem. The indicators of health, wellness, and vitality at 20 are different than they are at 50 and 80.
For example, many elder care facilities focus on providing a wealth of social opportunities for their residents. That’s because social engagements and group activities are a sign of healthy living for younger people. However, what if elderly adults have a greater need for solitude than they did 20 years ago?
A resident who shies away from participating in social programs might appear withdrawn or depressed. If you view the individual from the perspective of this theory, however, you understand that the person has grown into another phase of maturity.
Three Dimensions
Dr. Tornstam’s theory looks at three dimensions of human existence. He says that as we get older, people tend to move away from a materialistic, practical worldview. We rise into a realm where the dimensions of self, cosmic energy and relationships shift.
To younger people, this may make elderly adults seem like they have lost their grasp on reality. If we recognize this as a healthy part of the changes that happen as we mature, it’s completely normal.
The Self Dimension
Some psychological and social theories claim that the personality is unchangeable. However, Tornstam believes that your self is constantly changing as you experience the world. In your later years, taking time away from other people helps you build your integrity.
As you mature, you have a decreased need for attention. You have been part of many communities throughout your lifetime, and you feel the connection between yourself and others. Your sense of purpose seems to fall into place, and you’re more comfortable with who you are.
The Cosmic Dimension
As you get older, you might merge the past and the present. From the outside, this is viewed as confusion. People who care for older adults may feel that this is abnormal behavior.
However, Tornstam believes that this is a healthy part of maturing. Older adults are more comfortable with things that they don’t understand. Therefore, they don’t have a distinct need to separate the past and the present.
As their ability to describe their experience using language diminishes, it also becomes harder to explain what they’re thinking and feeling. Instead of being seen as a detriment to their quality of living, this can be a positive sign that the individual feels comfort and peace surrounding their place in the world.
The Relationship Dimension
Tornstam assumes that people’s value in social relationships changes as they grow older. They may intentionally choose to be more selective about social relationships. They also need more time to themselves.
As people grow older, they may also become less concerned with social norms and other people’s opinions. Although this may cause them to act in ways that people in their 40s may disapprove of, many elderly adults have merely transcended the boundaries of what we assume is the proper way to behave.
Limitations of The Theory
This theory can help caregivers come up with appropriate models of care that take into account what’s healthy for a senior. Using the theory allows care staff to assess patients in a more inclusive way.
A need for solitude can be seen as part of a healthy relationship dimension and not antisocial behavior. Facilities that base their standards on this theory can provide more access to nature and allow for more sharing of personal stories. They may also develop processes that help seniors express their sense of self through the continuum of time, such as journaling or art therapy.
The theory is limited in a few ways, however. Tornstam never defines Gerotranscendence. He explains that older people can transcend the limitations of society and the material world, but he never specifically delineates what the term means.
Tornstam also says that the theory is limited to elderly adults. Other researchers say that the sense of self, cosmic energy and relationships shifts and redevelops throughout every decade.
Finally, the theory doesn’t integrate mental health statistics very well. Experts say that up to 90 percent of people in long-term care settings are depressed. Tornstam’s theory would claim that all of the symptoms that we associate with depression aren’t necessarily indicators of the mental health condition in older adults. He says that negative experiences correlate with higher levels of transcendence.
The theory could redefine the way that we treat older adults with mental health issues. However, researchers need to explore the theory and current knowledge more deeply.
Dr. Lars Tornstam
Dr. Lars Tornstam was a Swedish sociologist and a professor at Copenhagen University and Uppsala University. His theory is similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which was amended in Maslow’s later years to include the idea of going beyond your potential and experiencing communion beyond the self.
Tornstam researched gerontology for more than 30 years. His initial work on Gerotranscendence made a splash in the late 1980s. It reversed society’s notions that healthy aging involves continuing to form social relationships and staying productive. The idea that retreating into your consciousness and disconnecting from the material world is a healthy sign of maturity was somewhat revolutionary at the time.
The theory continues to evolve. As we learn more about the differences between dementia, cognitive decline and Gerotranscendence, elderly adults and those who care for them may be able to support them better as they glide into this gratifying stage.
Tai chi, a form of Chinese martial arts that focuses on slow, controlled movements. It’s low impact and gives people with limited mobility a chance to improve their balance, range of motion and coordination. Research shows that tai chi for seniors can reduce the incidence of falls in elderly and at-risk adults by about 43 percent. With fewer than 34 percent of aging adults getting enough exercise, it’s important for caregivers, older individuals and people who work with seniors to know about this gentle but effective activity.
What Is Tai Chi?
Tai chi is an ancient way of moving that is practiced by more than 200 million people across the globe. Unlike many forms of exercise that focus on strengthening your muscles, improving your endurance or boosting your flexibility, this activity allows you to work with your qi, or life force.
The idea behind it is that when you’re feeling slow, sluggish and fatigued, your chi is low. With an abundance of chi, you feel alert and vibrant.
Every movement helps develop energy flow. For example, the tai chi prayer wheel is a cornerstone move that can rejuvenate you and renew your energy whenever you’re feeling stressed, anxious or tense.
The practice is considered to be a perfect exercise. It is associated with a low rate of injury and has a wide range of medical benefits, including:
Balance control
Improved fitness
Better aerobic capacity
Stronger muscles
Increased energy
Reduced inflammation
Improved mood
Less depression and anxiety
Better sleep quality
Improved immunity
Weight loss benefits
Tai chi has even been linked to increased longevity. In one study that looked at the exercise habits of more than 61,000 men in China, researchers found that it is relatively equivalent to walking and jogging for reducing mortality rates.
The history of tai chi is steeped in mystery. It was developed between 700 and 1500 years ago as a Chinese fighting art. The Taoist monk Zhang San Feng is credited with creating the practice.
Some people confuse tai chi with qi gong. Both involve energy work and slow, graceful motions. People who practice both types of exercise focus on energy flow within their bodies. However, qi gong involves more varied moves than tai chi. It also focuses on directing certain energy flows, whereas tai chi works on the energetic body as a whole.
So how do you practice? It involves moving fluidly through a series of positions. As in yoga, you must be mindful of your breath when practicing. As you move, you concentrate on inhaling into your belly, which is the center of your qi. The practice can create a better mind-body connection and help you become more present in your surroundings.
How Does Tai Chi Benefit The Elderly?
Although anyone can practice, it may be especially beneficial for older adults. Tai chi for seniors can be practiced in a chair, bed or wheelchair. Limited mobility is not a problem when performing tai chi exercises for seniors. Also, it has been found to improve medical conditions that often affect aging adults.
It Improves Stability In People With Parkinson’s Disease
One study looked at the ways in which tai chi balance exercises for seniors could improve postural stability in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Physical activity has been proven to help slow the deterioration of motor functions in these individuals. It also helps prolong independence.
However, many exercises geared toward people with Parkinson’s require equipment and safety monitoring. Seniors don’t always have access to gyms or trainers.
It was found to improve postural stability in patients with Parkinson’s disease because it encourages the type of rhythmic weight shifting that happens when you stand and walk. It also emphasizes making controlled motions when the center of gravity is displaced.
It Can Reduce Chronic Pain
Harvard Medical School researchers discovered that the traditional Chinese exercise is also beneficial for people with chronic heart failure. After a 12-week program, participants in the study reported having a better quality of life and experiencing better sleep.
Tai chi can also help with pain, which can affect up to 85 percent of seniors, according to NIH Medline Plus. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the exercise might be useful in treating fibromyalgia. Participants who practiced an hour twice a week for 12 weeks experienced more improvements in symptoms compared with people who were involved in wellness education and stretching.
Harvard Medical School reports that it can help relieve pain in people with arthritis, tension headaches and other chronic diseases. In a 2015 analysis, researchers looked at the practice’s effects on quality of life for adults in their 60s and 70s. All of the participants in the studies had at least one chronic disease, including cancer, osteoarthritis, heart failure or COPD. On average, the individuals who performed the movements showed improvements in gait, muscle strength and quality of life.
It Helps Treat People With Diabetes And Metabolic Syndrome
Tai chi can even help people control their type 2 diabetes. Medical News Today cites two studies that were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The researchers found that it lowers blood glucose levels and improves immune system response in people with this type of diabetes.
In addition to lowering inflammation and boosting the immune system, it was found was found to raise fitness levels and general feelings of well-being. Participants said that they slept better, had less pain, experienced an increase in energy levels and had fewer food cravings while participating in a tai chi program.
It Helps Prevent Falls
The National Council on Aging explains that falls are the leading cause of injury in seniors. Falling can affect an individual’s independence, making them reliant on a wheelchair or other people for assistance. It can also produce fatal injuries.
Twenty-five percent of Americans ages 65 and older fall every year. A senior citizen dies from a fall-related injury every 19 minutes.
Many seniors avoid activities that improve their wellness and quality of life because they’re afraid of falling. The less they move around, the more their risk of falling increases. In addition to damaging their physical well-being, this activity restriction can also lead to isolation, depression, and feelings of helplessness.
Tai chi is an integrative approach that can help older adults improve their balance and stamina while boosting their mood. Harvard Medical School says that an hour of intense movements brings about similar aerobic benefits as taking a brisk walk. Plus, performing the slow motions can improve a senior’s confidence more than hitting the sidewalk and venturing away from home.
Some researchers have found that the practice is just as effective for building muscle as more forceful types of weight training. Again, aging adults may be more likely to try something new if it is easy to do and doesn’t involve vigorous activity.
The movements improve stability because it requires practitioners to concentrate on all of the physical components that tend to decline as they get older. While performing the positions, you build leg strength, improve range of motion, work on flexibility and keep your reflexes sharp. These are all factors that can contribute to falls.
Surprisingly, the emotional impact of tai chi on falls cannot be overlooked. Fear of falling is one of the greatest predictors of a tumble. It helps reduce that anxiety by making you more comfortable on your feet.
It Is A Low Impact Exercise
Unlike many other forms of exercise, including walking, the exercise is considered to have zero impact on joints and bones. It’s one of the safest ways to get moving while avoiding injury. You can start the practice at any fitness level. You can also choose to work your way up to more intense motions if you become stronger and more mobile.
Easy Exercise Videos For Seniors
Tai chi for seniors is not difficult to learn. You don’t need to know a special language, follow certain steps or have specific equipment. Simply wear comfortable clothing and turn on a video to learn some moves.
Master Gohring
Before you begin a routine, you should learn to focus on your breath. Even if you don’t incorporate any physical actions into your practice, learning how to inhale and exhale properly can provide benefits.
Your breath provides a mind-body connection. It’s also calming. The breath may be the most important aspect of the activity.
You may find it hard to coordinate the breath with the motions at first. That’s normal. You can get more practice by practicing this regularly throughout the day whether you’re doing the exercises or not.
Picture your breath to move as a continuous circle into your body and out of your body. One of the most important aspects of tai chi breathing is to focus on inhaling into your belly while relaxing your muscles. The more you practice, the more natural this type of deep breathing will become.
Warmup In Chair
This warmup can be done while seated, which makes it ideal for people with limited mobility. It’s a gentle way to strengthen and loosen up the body if you have an injury or issues with stability or pain.
The exercises emphasize the muscles of the upper body and abdomen. However, the lower body is not neglected. Some leg extensions and ankle exercises are incorporated in this sitting warmup video.
The instructor talks you through each movement. If you have trouble hearing the directions, you can follow along with what you see on the screen. Each sequence is repeated several times, making it easy to mimic.
Movements For Arthritis
This sit-down tai chi for arthritis program was first developed in 1996. Over the years, people who aren’t able to do standing movements have been able to benefit from this type of sequence. It has been taught to people who have suffered from strokes, multiple sclerosis, heart problems and lung conditions.
Dr. Paul Lam explains that these easy exercises can even be practiced on an airplane.
You’ll learn how to do the wave motion with proper form. Dr. Lam tells you what parts of the body to focus on as you do the hand positions. This involves some less obvious positions, including putting pressure on a specific foot and concentrating on pulling in your knee.
8-Minute Daily Practice
These easy tai chi moves are taught from a standing position. They’re simple for beginners to learn.
If you practice every day, you’ll improve your balance and posture. You should start feeling fewer aches and pains if you do these over time.
The instructor tells you exactly what to do with your hands and feet as he shows you the moves. He even explains how many repetitions of each action you might want to do.
The moves included in this video include:
Calming the waters
Push water to the side
Ball to the valley
Push and pull
Gentle Tai Chi and Qi Gong LEAP Service
If you want to perform a longer exercise program, try this 22-minute routine. You’ll learn some gentle moves that you can do while standing or sitting. The instructors will show you how to adapt the positions for different levels.
They also explain how to adjust the moves if you have limited mobility. You’ll see how to use a large or narrow range of motion. The instructors also remind you to check in with your body frequently so that you’re always performing moves that feel comfortable and safe.
You’ll begin by inhaling and exhaling as you relax obvious areas of tension. You can always come back to this basic posture if you need to rest during the sequence.
What Is The 70% Rule?
When we strive to do anything in life, we’re often told to “give it our all” or “put in 100%.” We get used to doing that, and it puts us at greater risk for injury when it comes to exercise.
Tai chi is rooted in the Taoist tradition. Part of the philosophy involves the 70-percent rule. This says that an individual should not perform at more than 70 percent of his or her capacity.
That doesn’t mean that you should sit back and do the moves in an unfocused manner. You can put in your full concentration and determination.
However, don’t push your body to its limits. This not only strains your muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments but also puts mental pressure on you. In tai chi, your mental state is just as important as your physical moves. If you shut down because you feel tense or overexerted, you won’t be able to do the practice effectively.
The 70-percent rule applies to every aspect of the practice. To follow it, think about how much you can do. For example, perhaps a move requires you to bend all the way to the floor, and you’re capable of doing so. You should still only bend 70 percent of the way down so that you can work on developing the position properly.
The rule pertains to the length of time for which you practice too. If you know that you can do an hour-long routine, you should practice the 70-percent rule by only doing tai chi for 45 minutes.
Can Tai Chi Be Used As A Treatment For Anything?
Tai chi is part of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM. TCM practitioners use mind and body practices, such as tai chi, to prevent and treat physical and mental problems. Therefore, you might wonder if you can use tai chi to treat any medical conditions.
According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, it is a complementary approach for treating many conditions. Because it’s cost effective and generally considered to be safe, it doesn’t hurt to try it for conditions such as:
Fibromyalgia
Parkinson’s disease
Pain management
Menopausal symptoms
Osteoarthritis
Stress
Heart failure
Type 2 diabetes
Much of the research that has been conducted on tai chi for treating medical conditions is in its infancy. Therefore, some of its claims for alleviating certain problems aren’t substantiated. Still, the physical and psychological benefits are so numerous that you can use the practice to indirectly improve your well-being even if it doesn’t treat a specific disease.
Tai Chi Classes For Seniors
Many gyms, community centers and senior centers offer tai chi classes. A group class can keep you motivated and hold you accountable for creating consistency with your practice. With other people around, you will also have help if you do fall or injure yourself. An in-person instructor can also correct your form as you do the moves.
If you decide to take tai chi classes for seniors, you might wonder what to expect. If you have never taken any online classes or watched any videos, you may not know the moves. Make sure that you tell the teacher that it’s your first class.
You should also ask the instructor whether it’s appropriate to ask questions during the class or save them for later. You might even want to observe a few classes and jot down your questions to ask the instructor before you attend your first class as a participant.
You might feel like you’re not keeping up with the other students, but there is no set endpoint. Tai chi is a journey, and you’ll always have more to learn. If you go in with an open mind, you won’t feel pressure to perform perfectly. Be patient with yourself, and remember that the more you practice, the easier the moves will become.
Tips And Strategies
Because many people have never performed tai chi, they might be hesitant to learn the moves. These tips for seniors will help you get started.
It’s Never Too Late To Learn
More than half of the people who practice tai chi begin after age 50. Don’t avoid learning because you feel like you’re too old or out of shape.
Learn From Others
If you can take an in-person class, you can establish a rapport with your peers and learn how others adapt the moves to work for their fitness and mobility levels. If you can’t attend a class, you can learn something new from every online instructor or YouTube video that you watch.
Work It Into Your Daily Life
Some experts say that about 30 percent of seniors might deal with anxiety on a regular basis. Incorporating tai chi into everything you do can help you manage stress.
Set an alarm to remind you to do mindful breathing every few hours throughout the day. Work the 70-percent rule into everything that you do.
When you structure your day based on tai chi principles, you may live in a state of relaxation instead of tension. For example, you can apply the 70-percent rule to every aspect of your life. It can help you prevent injury when doing other physical tasks. This rule can also help you stay calm when you’re presented with a problem that you would normally obsess over until you wore yourself out.
Stay Consistent
It can be hard to develop new habits when you’re older. Try to set aside a specific time each day to practice.
If you can only do 5 minutes at a time, that’s fine. In fact, you should probably start with 3 minutes in that case so that you stick with the 70-percent rule. Once you feel like the short practice is part of your routine, you can begin to lengthen it if that’s a goal.
Don’t Learn Everything At Once
You don’t have to know a lot of moves to benefit from tai chi. Trying to remember new postures can be challenging for a senior. Even just learning one new move a month can add to your practice in a way that’s not overwhelming.
Shingles is a viral infection that follows a varicella-zoster infection, although it can take decades for symptoms of the secondary disease to emerge. The condition presents as a painful and blistering rash, but it is not life-threatening.
According to the Center for Disease Control, there are nearly one million cases in the United States each year, and almost half of those cases are in older adults over age 60. Some people only see one instance of the illness, while others have recurring symptoms, but 30 percent of Americans will develop shingles at some point in their lifetime.
Duration of Shingles: Timeline of the Virus
The timeline of shingles is consistent once symptoms begin, but many people may have the condition for years without realizing it. Internal shingles can take decades to present itself, while many people never show symptoms at all. If you’re asking yourself, “how long does shingles last,” it can be different for each person, but below is a general progression.
Itching, Pain, or Tingling
Before any irritation appears, the site may first itch or tingle, or even feel painful. These sensations start to happen between one and five days before redness or itching begins. Many people may not recognize these symptoms, particularly if they have a mild case of shingles.
Blister-Like Rash
After the initial discomfort in a specific area, blisters begin to emerge. This contagious rash can take two to four weeks to go away, but once a flare-up ends, an individual will no longer be contagious. Shingles duration varies based on whether people take medication and the current state of their health, however.
Potential for Transmission
During the time that the blisters are active, a person with shingles can transmit the varicella-zoster virus to others. Once the blisters scab over, the transmission risk disappears. People who have chronic conditions or have undergone cancer or other treatment that suppresses the immune system may be more vulnerable to disease transmission.
Treatment
While you cannot cure shingles, antiviral medicines may shorten the eruption period of rashes. These medicines can also help lessen the severity of an outbreak. Both topical pain relief and oral medications may also relieve discomfort. Calamine lotion and gentle oatmeal baths may help with itching, too.
Return to Health
Once the irritation clears, most people with shingles feel healthy again. However, most adults with shingles can experience flare-ups more often when their immune function is low, or they are otherwise ill.
In total, the condition can last for anywhere from two to six weeks, and many people only experience an outbreak one time. However, it is possible to have it multiple times.
What Is Shingles?
Shingles is a condition that lies inactive in people who have a particular type of herpes. If you look at shingles pictures, a shingles rash appears as blisters. The pattern usually follows a stripe across the torso, but variations do occur.
How Does Someone Get Shingles?
Only people who have carry a dormant infection can contract shingles because the viral illness sticks around in nerve tissue that can reactivate later in life. While people of all ages can develop shingles, it’s most common in people who are over age 60.
Risk factors for shingles include increased age, leukemia, lymphoma, and HIV infection. People who receive steroid treatments and cancer chemotherapy are also part of the high-risk category. At the same time, people with underlying conditions that affect their body’s ability to fight infection are also at risk. This can include people with diabetes or other conditions.
Shingles Symptoms
Although the National Shingles Foundation notes that the symptoms of shingles are understandably vague, because each person feels the effects differently, there are general guidelines for what people can expect to result in a diagnosis. However, the symptoms are often similar to the mild flu, which leads to people delaying a doctor’s visit.
According to the Mayo Clinic, early symptoms include mild tingling, numbness, burning, or discomfort in a small area of one side of the body. Sensitivity to touch, red skin, and itching come before clusters of fluid-filled blisters. Additional symptoms can also involve fever, headache, sensitivity to light, and fatigue.
While these symptoms can also indicate other health issues, individuals who have a higher risk of shingles need to remain aware of their body’s signals and contact their medical care provider in case of any concerns.
In very rare cases, shingles can occur without visible indications. This subcategory of shingles is zoster sine herpete, but still involves shooting sensations, numbness, tingling, or itching. In some cases, people do not notice the emergence of blisters, and so assume that their symptoms have nothing to do with shingles at all. This is more common than actual zoster sine herpete.
When Should I See The Doctor?
If you have never experienced shingles before, you should contact your doctor and bring along a list of your symptoms to make sure that you address any underlying issues or oddities. This is especially important for people over age 60 because seniors often face additional complications.
You can visit any medical professional, such as a general practitioner, family physician, internist, dermatologist, or even a neurologist for assistance. A test will confirm or deny the suspicion of shingles.
Your care provider needs to know about any prior health conditions as well as any medications that you are currently taking. If you require any drugs to help recover from shingles, your care provider will need to avoid drug interactions, so a list of medicines that you are on is helpful for this.
You should also consult medical help if large areas of the body show blistering activity, or if the affected area is close to your eyes. Severe complications can occur if these conditions remain untreated, but with medical assistance, patients can avoid many undesirable outcomes.
Many people can live with shingles and avoid severe complications, but an early and accurate diagnosis is the first step in promoting and protecting your overall health.
Shingles Treatment Options
To effectively treat shingles, you should first obtain an official diagnosis from a medical professional. Ideally, you should begin a course of action within 72 hours of the onset of symptoms.
At your initial visit, your care provider can take fluid and tissue samples and provide prescriptions for antiviral drugs like Zovirax or Valtrex for shingles treatment. A range of medications is available to alleviate shingles pain as well.
Acyclovir (Zovirax) and Valacyclovir (Valtrex) are two common antiviral drugs that can aid recovery of shingles. For management of discomfort, topical capsaicin patches (Qutenza) or numbing agents such as lidocaine in cream, gel, spray, or patch form soothe from the outside in.
Injections of corticosteroids, local anesthetics, anticonvulsants like gabapentin (Neurotonin), and even tricyclic antidepressants (amitriptyline) can also offer relief. The right medication can help shingles sufferers retain their normal function and get back to living life as usual, despite their underlying diagnosis.
However, not all medications will work for all patients, and each medication carries its own side effects and risks. You should discuss these potential side effects with your health team and decide which is in your best recovery and health maintenance interest.
One important consideration, while you are taking medications for shingles, is to avoid alcohol. According to the Mayo Clinic, drinking alcohol can reduce the effectiveness of many medicines, including those that relieve shingles symptoms.
Managing Shingles in Older Adults
Populations of elderly adults are at a higher risk of contracting shingles because of lower immune capacity. As we age, our bodies begin to become more susceptible to outside influences.
Immunocompromised individuals with other underlying conditions also face a higher risk. In fact, by age 80, half of all people have had shingles. This means older adults have the most to worry about when it comes to contracting shingles and living with its effects.
There are unique factors to consider for elderly populations, particularly if those individuals live at home and do not have access to medical support or means of self-care.
Long-Term Pain and Other Complications
In many cases, shingles causes lasting problems for older adults. These complications range from minor to severe and debilitating and vary based on each person’s unique life circumstances and healthcare history.
Vision and Hearing Problems
If the outbreak originates near a person’s eyes or ears, this can affect their vision and hearing. Scarring and sensitivity can damage eyes and ears. Permanent blindness is a serious potential side effect of shingles on elderly populations. Luckily, treating instances of facial shingles quickly can help avoid long-term damage.
Bacterial Infection and Scarring
Because the blisters present as open sores, seniors who cannot manage self-care, or those who do not receive assistance, can contract bacterial infections. In some cases, however, people develop bacterial infections because of environmental factors, not personal care abilities.
When bacterial infections take hold, tissue can become scarred or necrotize completely without proper medical care. This dangerous and devastating effect of shingles can result in disfigurement or potential handicap if it continues without rehabilitative measures.
Post-Herpetic Neuralgia
Post-herpetic neuralgia is a complication that stems from nerve damage. It affects nerve fibers inside and outside the body and can prolong discomfort even after rashes clear up. People who are over 50, those with severe shingles outbursts or who had shingles on their faces or torsos, and people with chronic diseases are at higher risk of this disorder.
Many people with this condition report that it is difficult to even wear clothing in some cases, because of the extreme sensitivity of their bodies. Sleep can be difficult to come by because of topical irritants, and venturing out of the house can become an insurmountable challenge.
Fortunately, the CDC reports that the zoster injection is 66.5 percent effective in preventing post-herpetic neuralgia, and it also appears to reduce the severity of shingles and PHN if a person contracts shingles despite preventative vaccination.
This unfortunate fact means that even minor illness, and particularly a condition like shingles that influences both physical and mental abilities, can pose a huge challenge to senior adults living alone. In addition to the regular aches and headaches from depressive episodes, older adults dealing with shingles outbreaks face further isolation and emotions that are difficult to process.
As with any disease, older adults who live alone or in an assisted living facility require additional support and care, both from family and medical staff. This is an important aspect of action because both social and medical factors should contribute to whole-person care solutions.
Loss of Sleep
With or without post-herpetic neuralgia, many sufferers of shingles deal with long-term sensitivity, tenderness, and severe discomfort. This can impact their sleep habits, therefore affecting their ability to engage in enjoyable activities and maintain energy levels throughout the day.
Keeping active is a vital part of aging healthfully, so elderly adults with shingles should focus on healthy habits as a primary means of combating potential flare-ups. Getting enough sleep, exercise, and maintaining food intake can all help the body combat illness.
Frequently Asked Questions:
From “how long does shingles last” to “how much time will I need off work”, there are a lot of questions surrounding how to cope with a shingles diagnosis.
Here are the most common questions surrounding the condition along with their answers.
How Long Can Shingles Last Without Medication?
Without medication, blisters typically scab over within seven to ten days, clearing completely by two to four weeks later. Symptoms can arrive before an outburst, but also continue to remain after the redness and blistering subside.
Medication is optional for people suffering from shingles, but it’s often a welcome reprieve from the complications of the condition. Still, some medication can prolong shingles outbreaks if a person is allergic or suffers other side effects from any dosage.
How Long Does Pain Last With Shingles?
Because every person is different, the duration of a shingles outbreak can last anywhere from two to six weeks, but the after-effects can linger for months or even years. Once blisters heal, many people still deal with soreness and painful recovery.
When Does Shingles Stop Being Contagious?
Shingles is only contagious during periods when the active blisters leak fluid. Also, you cannot give shingles to another person, but they may contract chickenpox from exposure.
How Do I Shorten The Duration of Shingles?
Antiviral drugs can speed healing after a shingles outbreak, and topical and internal medicines can aid in relieving discomfort. In this way, the overall duration shortens, and the effects are less severe. However, medication is entirely optional for people with shingles, although its ability to offer comfort and a shorter outbreak period is something to consider.
How Long Do Shingles Blisters Continue To Appear?
Blisters typically stick around for under two weeks, and often people only experience one shingles episode in their lifetime. However, it’s possible for the condition to recur, since that is the nature of all viruses.
Some people experience multiple outbreaks, particularly with increased age, standard illness, chronic pre-existing conditions, or seasonal sickness that knocks down their immune systems’ defenses.
According to the National Shingles Foundation, shingles recurs in roughly one to five percent of patients. However, the location of the blisters usually varies, and many recurring cases are not actually shingles, but another variation of herpes instead.
Accurate diagnosis requires testing and a professional opinion, so attempting to self-diagnose is often more harmful than helpful.
How Can I Prevent Transmission?
To keep from getting others sick, avoid direct contact with people during an outbreak of shingles where blisters are active. Alternatively, you can attempt to cover the affected area to avoid contact. Either way, once blisters scab over, they no longer pose a transmission hazard, because the fluid inside is what carries the viral material.
Also, even people who have received the zoster or varicella vaccines are still at risk for contracting this form of herpes from people with shingles. This is because Zoster is not 100 percent efficacious, meaning it does not prevent shingles 100 percent of the time.
According to Immunize.org, the efficacy of zoster is 51 percent in people ages 60 and older, but this number decreases with an increase in age. Also, according to their research, shingles protection with zoster appears to last for less than ten years. This means most people will see a recurring risk of shingles regardless of vaccination status.
Does Valtrex Shorten The Duration of Shingles?
Valtrex, or valacyclovir, is a drug that blocks the spread of herpes that creates shingles. This helps fight infection and reduce the duration of outbreaks. It works for shingles as well as other herpes conditions like genital herpes and cold sores in adults.
There are serious side effects with Valtrex, but its ability to shorten the period of blisters and discomfort with shingles are often worth the risk for many people. Side effects include harm to the kidneys, especially when you take this medication along with other medicines that tax those organs.
Fever, bruising or bleeding, red spots unrelated to shingles blisters, bloody diarrhea, vomiting, weakness, fainting, and lack of urination are concerns that warrant immediate action.
How Long Will I Be Out of Work?
People who work with at-risk populations, such as seniors or immunocompromised individuals, should ensure that they adequately cover any lesions so that none of the fluid from the blisters touches others. If that’s not possible, it’s better to abstain from working completely during an outbreak.
Ideally, you should avoid working when you are contagious when blisters are present, but for many people, this is not feasible. However, if the blistering episode has passed and symptoms like fever, fatigue, or discomfort remain, consider taking extra time for recovery.
Should You Get The Shingles Vaccine?
According to geriatric pharmacist Kenneth Cohen, PharmD, Ph.D., CGP, zoster (also Zostavax), the shingles vaccine, “significantly reduced the incidence of herpes zoster” and can preserve the quality of life of people who avoid shingles through vaccination.
However, the Center for Disease Control’s Q&A on zoster does advise people with severe allergies, immunosuppression, or those who are pregnant to avoid receiving the shot. They do recommend routine vaccination for people over 60 but only advise vaccinating in specific cases for those ages 50 to 59.
For people ages 50 to 59, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, does not recommend routine vaccination with Zostavax. This is because disease rates are lower in this age group than in the 60 and above population. Also, their statement notes that there is “insufficient evidence for long term protection” with the shot.
Because the protection period lasts roughly ten years, the ACIP states that vaccination should take place at age 60 at the minimum. However, because Zostavax is FDA-approved for ages 50 through 59, physicians can still administer the shot without the ACIP’s recommendation.
When it comes to the injection itself, even for people who do not have a significant risk of reaction to the shot may experience redness at the injection site, tenderness, swelling, and itchiness. In the CDC’s key clinical trial, 1.4 percent of participants reported serious adverse reactions, but they note that the placebo group’s percentage was identical. Overall, this equates to a high safety profile on the vaccination.
Prevention of shingles is tricky business, partly because there are no clear answers on why some individuals experience outbreaks while others do not. Experts reason that this is a result of individual health and immunity factors, as well as other considerations like age.
Beyond these innate differences across populations, the unpredictability of the shot’s efficacy means that some people will have protection against shingles, while others will not, and there is no reliable way of predicting who will avoid infection and who will end up with a diagnosis.
More Information About Shingles
Here are a few resources where you can learn more about the duration of shingles in the elderly.
Learning how to make a family tree can be an easy and fun experience for everyone in the family.
You may be wondering how to make a genealogical tree, and in this article, we’ll tell you exactly what to do. You won’t need any specialized tree templates to make your tree chart, so don’t be afraid to dive right in.
What is A Family Tree?
A family history is a diagram which charts the familial relationships of each generation of a family. In essence, a family history tracks your family genealogy and is the way you make a family tree: who is related to who, and how. You could also call family history charts genealogical trees, but it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as well.
A very small family history chart might be one node for a mother, another node for a father, and then above them, nodes for their children. Most families who make family history charts want to go a bit further than the obvious, though.
Complicated family history charts look more like tree charts than simple diagrams because they contain a lot of information. Each node of the family history chart shows who gave birth to that person and also any children that person subsequently had, and with who. If you’re trying to establish your family’s lineage past a couple of living generations, you’ll rapidly find that things get difficult.
How to Make a Family Tree
Making a family history chart can be as simple or as difficult as you choose to make it. Some families prefer to hunt down distant relatives in other countries, whereas others are content to account for everyone within two or three generations.
You’ll follow four main steps to make a family history chart: tallying your living relatives, figuring out where dead relatives should go, hunting down more detail on dead relatives if desired, and compiling all of the information together.
If you don’t have a poster board, pins, and boxes of old photos, you should probably assemble those before starting. You can also use a software program to keep track of your family’s genealogy if you prefer.
Account for Living Relatives
Accounting for living relatives is as easy as writing on an index card the name of the living family member, then pinning that index card to the board. Pinning a photograph to the index card on the board helps to see who is who at a glance.
Start from your immediate family first, then work your way outward. For everyone that has a maiden name or a nickname, you should write it on their index card. For now, pin older generations lower on the poster board and pin the younger generations above them.
As an example, let’s say your immediate family consists of your parents, you, your sibling, your spouse, and your two children. Your parents would each have a card, and have their index cards at the bottom. Above them should be your card, and next to your card should be your spouse.
At this point, you should work out a system for identifying the original bloodline of your family. Mark your spouse’s card to indicate that they weren’t a child of your parents, but rather a child of someone else’s parents—who you may or may not want to put on the tree. Put your sibling’s card next to your card, once again making sure that it’s clear that they’re your sibling and not your spouse.
Above you and your spouse, put a card for each of your children. Voila, you now have a simple family history chart which accounts for the founders of the family, their progeny, and then the latest generation as begat by those progenies. This basic family history chart will look more like a shrub, but it’s a start.
If you want to get fancy, you can write stuff like the country of origin or other data onto the index cards.
Interview Living Relatives About Dead Relatives
You probably want to take the family history chart way beyond a simple bush, though. To fill out the roots and branches of the family history chart, you’ll need to start including dead relatives, including those that you may not hear about much.
Interview your living relatives about the ones who have passed is a great starting point.
You’ve probably heard your parents or grandparents mention their lost siblings or parents in passing, but now it’s time to pin down those relationships. Ask questions until you have an index card for all of the siblings, parents, great-aunts, cousins, and others that you may have never heard of before.
A great question to start with is “who did Grandma like to tell stories about that you never met?” questions like these build the basis for the harder-to-reach roots of the family history chart. You may not necessarily have enough information to place the new entries correctly—sometimes it won’t be clear who was on what side of the family.
The important thing during this step is to assemble names, ranges of years, and geographical areas. If your dead relatives were particularly talkative, you might have a huge extension of your family history chart just by interviewing some of their caretakers. It’s much more likely that you’ll have a lot of clues and only a few completed cards to add to the board after interviewing, though.
It’s worth interpreting “living relatives” very loosely during this step of the process. If you think you might be distantly related to someone with the same surname as you, call them up and ask them a few questions to see if you might be related. Reaching out to a stranger is a bit scary, but you can add a huge amount of depth and breadth to your tree if you’re willing to take a chance or two along the way.
Surviving friends of dead relatives are also good sources of information. They’ll likely know more details about the person’s relations in periods of time before their children were born.
After interviewing comes the hardest step: following the clues from interviews to finish those incomplete index cards so that you can place them in the correct spot on the tree.
Remember to check nicknames, maiden names, and potentially misspelled surnames if your relatives immigrated at any point. If you have a common family name, your task will be considerably more difficult. Try to zero in in dates, locations, professions, and relations as much as possible given the information that you have.
Often, this round of research can create a lot of hunches that are not-quite-confirmed. If you can track enough information about a particular node on the family history chart, you can probably request a public record document that will put your hunch to the test. Birth and death records are retained for long periods of time at municipal places like town halls, so requesting the document (and showing that you have reason to believe you are related to this person) can put your questions to rest.
This process can get difficult for families whose family history chart spans multiple countries, as many do. The single biggest dead ends in family history chart record hunting are the barriers between countries, especially in the era of World War 2. Many records from that era were lost or intentionally destroyed, but if you’re lucky, the immigration bodies will have some record which will be of use for you—though not all will be forthcoming.
If you hit a dead end in your research quest, don’t feel too bad. Some families live in the same geographical area for many generations, which makes genealogical tree research very easy, and other families are more dynamic, making them much harder to pin down.
Should I Get Genetic Testing?
In this day and age, you can get genetic testing which can give you additional clues regarding your family’s geographical ancestry if the trail has gone cold. If you don’t have an active lead to a specific geographical area after reaching a certain node, it might be worth getting your genome sequenced via one of the popular services to see what you can learn.
Genetic testing can typically clean up areas of ambiguity in your family history chart, provided that you have samples that you’re willing to part with and pay for processing. The more living members of your family that you can get tested, the more information you’ll learn. You might learn, for instance, that your first cousin is your second cousin, or that your grandmother isn’t related to you by blood.
Testing of this sort can unearth family secrets that some people would prefer to remain buried, so tread carefully.
For most people, this is a bit too much work for too little chance of reward, though.
Assemble the Information
Once you’ve assembled all of the possible records on everyone that you can really find information on, it’s time to clean up and fill out the giant poster board. Don’t be afraid to start from scratch, just be sure to have the oldest generation at the bottom of the tree and the latest generation at the top.
Each generation accounts for roughly 20 or 30 years of life, so it may be a useful unit of organization to break up the tiers of your tree. Don’t get too hung up on having specific generations, though. People don’t always reproduce exactly in phase with the period that they “should,” and your tree doesn’t necessarily need to account for when people were born, merely their relationship to each other.
Seeing your entire family’s bloodline in one giant chart can be very interesting, and it can give your entire family a new sense of their place in history. The more information on each node that you can add, the more you can understand how your ancestors lived.
It’s acceptable to have gaps and uncertain connections in your family history chart; almost everyone does. It’s often very difficult to create much of anything of certainty in your family history chart beyond the “great-grandparent” level. At that point, you’re reaching back about a century in time, which is a feat.
Tips for Creating Your Genealogical Tree
Now that you know the basic process for making a family history chart let’s tie everything together.
Here are a few good tips that will set your family history chart on the right growth trajectory:
Keep track of maiden names and be sure to search for them instead of newer names
Use common sense when following the paper trail; don’t search randomly, search near where other relatives were or came from
Churches sometimes have a different set of documents than municipal sources
Sometimes finding a living friend of a dead relative is just as useful as finding the relative
Don’t be afraid to reach out
Immigration officials often have the best sets of documents
Sometimes names get misspelled during migration paperwork
It’s also easy to get off on the wrong track while making your family history chart. Here are a few common mistakes to watch out for while making your family’s tree:
Starting to chart from the branches rather than from the roots
Assuming that nobody was adopted
Assuming that a lack of official information on a person is a dead end
Assuming that nobody had any illegitimate children
Not reaching out to people who share the same surname as someone of interest
Not including yourself in the family history chart
Getting discouraged when you find a dead end
That wraps up our guide on how to make a family history chart. Get ready to start digging through records and interviewing your relatives! Once you view building a family tree like building an investigation, you’ll be well on your way to being a master genealogist.
Did you know that up to 1 in 20 of the elderly have tendencies that are consistent with hoarding? Scientists call the combination of self-neglect, extreme hoarding, squalor, and a lack of shame “Diogenes syndrome,” though it’s often a complete mystery to caregivers and others. At the end of the article, we’ll explain why “Diogenes” is a bit of a misnomer, but for now, let’s dive into the uncomfortable world of hoarding.
It’s understandable for older relatives to be a bit eccentric or reclusive, but at what point do their behaviors become pathological? Patterns of excessive hoarding and self-neglect in the elderly can be painful to witness, and even harder to remedy when you’re dealing with a stubborn person.
The many symptoms of elderly hoarding and squalor aren’t pretty to think about, and they’re even less pretty to deal with first hand. Often, elderly hoarders only reach out for help when they’re at the end of their wits– and unfortunately, the end of their lives. Hoarding and living in squalor are both broadly dangerous and detrimental to anyone’s health, never mind the weakened health of a mentally ill senior.
In this article, we’ll teach you about the syndrome, senile squalor syndrome, hoarding, and what to watch out for in the senior citizens that you love. At the end of the article, we’ll offer a few potential solutions and treatments to the syndrome and squalor syndrome.
What is Senile Squalor Syndrome?
Senile squalor syndrome is a pathological condition in which seniors can no longer take care of themselves or their homes, resulting in the buildup of messes, objects, and decay. It’s common for the homes of seniors with the syndrome to be laden with piles of rotting food, peeling wallpaper, and even dead pets trapped beneath hills of debris that a well-functioning person would have never let accumulate.
Squalor gets mentioned in the same breath as hoarding disorders very frequently. Squalor syndrome occurs for several similar reasons which may surprise you. First, frontal lobe damage or degeneration from dementia are core to senile squalor.
The frontal lobe of the brain is responsible for executive functioning, which includes long-term planning, motivation, task saliency, and also short-term planning of action. In senile people, connections between the frontal lobes executive functions and the rest of the brain have likely weakened after a lifetime of use. Weakened communication between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain means that certain norms aren’t worth following in the eye of the senior.
Impacts to the senior’s physical mobility often play a role in the development of senior squalor syndrome. The more physical work a senior believes the task of cleaning up or picking up will require, the larger of a motivational barrier they build in their minds. Once this imagined task of cleaning or picking up becomes too big to deal with, the thought is suppressed, or action of picking up is procrastinated to a later time.
Planning to perform actions, like cleaning up or picking up, is extremely difficult with a degraded frontal lobe. The seat of working memory is also in the frontal lobe, which means that even tenuously created plans to clean up are at high risk of being forgotten and falling by the wayside. Thus, squalor develops via a combination of reduced physical ability, accumulated brain damage, and lack of a sufficient support network to assist with everyday tasks.
So long as a senior citizen is living in a context where they still have the ability and the agency to maintain their environment, they should be safe from squalor. As they age, the probability becomes more and more likely because of weakening physical ability and also weakening mental prowess.
Risk Factors
The risk factors for squalor may surprise you. In the previous section, we mentioned frontal lobe degeneration or damage. Prior brain damage during earlier in a senior’s life makes them have a higher risk of developing a hoarding syndrome. Likewise, if a senior was diagnosed with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder earlier in life, they have a much higher chance of developing a hoarding disorder in their twilight years.
There is an abundance of natural aging processes which result in frontal lobe degeneration, but for senile people prone to hoarding and living in squalor, there are other factors at play, too. It takes more than old age to turn someone into a full-blown hoarder, willing to live in total squalor.
Seniors suffering from hoarding or squalor typically live alone and are at increased risk of depression, which causes further damage to the frontal lobe’s ability to regulate the rest of the brain. In short, being reclusive and lonely causes brain damage.
This fact means that the seniors that are at the highest risk of developing a hoarding disorder are those who are isolated and vulnerable. On top of the negative health effects of isolation, isolation also enables many of the behaviors that characterize senior hoarders. Housemates and relatives are seldom okay with living in filth, and in their presence act as a barrier against the development of full-blown hoarding.
Prior emotional trauma involving loss also puts seniors at a higher risk for hoarding and squalor, as does a history of generosity. This can lead to heartbreaking interactions between hoarders and their relatives in which the hoarders attempt to offer their seemingly precious items to the relatives, who are revolted.
The hoarders simply don’t see squalor due to deficits in their working memory or other frontal lobe features. It’s critical to stay compassionate, even when the elderly lash out as a result of their confusion—they simply can’t control themselves.
Signs and Symptoms of Elderly Hoarding
Hoarders syndrome starts off in a way that may seem innocent: retaining objects for sentimental reasons. Everyone is entitled to have personal possessions, and keeping things around for their sentimental value is also something that everyone has a right to do.
The difference is that hoarders attach sentimental meaning to every object, and can never stand to part with something that could, in some fantastical situation, come in handy.
Seniors can likely articulate these fantastical reasons for any given object if prompted. The key to understanding the rationale behind each object is that the senile individual’s perspective of what items are worth keeping and which are not is severely skewed. There will be a rationale for every object, no matter how trivial disposal may seem.
To a normal person, these rationales will be overtly false, but to an elderly hoarder, they ring true. The very perception of reality of an elderly hoarder is extremely compromised. Even coming to terms about what behaviors are damaging to their health can be hard when it comes to talking about cleanliness and object retainment.
The biggest single test for elderly hoarding is to prompt the hoarder to discard an object that has no sentimental or utilitarian value. In many cases, it could be rotting food, wrapping paper, or broken dishes. The hoarder will reject the call to discard the useless objects, inventing a rationale. The rationale will seem completely off-base to a rational observer, indicating that the senior is in deep trouble.
Diogenes Syndrome Prognosis and Treatment Options
There are a few tactics for treating senior hoarding and squalor. The most effective tactic is to remove the senior from the conditions of squalor and place them into a supervised living facility. Though the senior will likely resist this separation from their objects, squalor and hoarding are always accompanied by a general inability to take care of oneself.
This means that the senior belongs in a place where others can help them to maintain a decent standard of living which they couldn’t on their own. It is not recommended to move a relative with hoarder syndrome into your home for care.
Seniors who hoard and live in squalor are beyond the level of care that most people can provide at home, and will likely experience a big drop in their quality of life as a result.
There are also several combined pharmacological and psychological interventions, formulated from protocols for obsessive-compulsive disorder. These interventions are unlikely to work because they depend on the senior to take the medication that they are prescribed consistently while also implementing lifestyle changes with the help of a therapist.
The medications required for this approach may also have adverse drug interactions with other medications that the senior is taking or should be taking, which can cause medical problems. If hoarding a habit in a senior, the most common treatment regimen as outlined above is likely to be ineffective.
Critically, any attempts to generate change within the hoarder will resist. Resistance gets stronger for senile persons with dementia, who may become confused and more agitated. Sneaky techniques are ethically questionable, and so are not attempted.
Tips for Dealing with Parents Who Hoard
Living with a hoarder is extremely difficult because hoarders tend to allow their squalor to spill out of their areas and into common areas. If possible, draw very clear boundaries about which areas the hoarders are allowed to pollute, and which are strictly forbidden.
These boundaries are unlikely to work long term, will probably cause familial strife, and may result in unsafe living conditions inside of your parents’ quarters. As the clear-minded adult, you must do your best to enforce the boundaries, however.
You may also want to enforce boundaries on what can be kept in your parents’ living spaces. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to stop your relative from hoarding entirely, but you can at least impose rules such as “no piles blocking access in and out of the room” or “no piles taller than two feet high.” It may break your heart to be strict, but remember that every pile can grow larger, so long as your senile relative can procure new objects. Keeping piles small in the first place will save you a big headache later on.
Insisting on weekly inspections and deep cleanings will also be helpful in maintaining the condition of your hoarding parent if you are forced to keep them in your home. Grime builds up just as quickly as piles, and it’s important to catch and reprimand hoarding of disgusting things like used toilet paper, which the hoarder may consider to be still useful.
Compassion will be in short supply, but try to remember that hoarders suffer from a neurological condition which prevents them from remembering, planning, assessing, and executing actions effectively. They aren’t playing with a full deck.
Unfortunately, disputing the rationales provided by elderly hoarders is where things can start to get ugly. Elderly hoarders tend to react to the questioning of their rationale with hostility or outright aggression. In the mind of the senile hoarder, attempts to clean up or throw out hoarded objects are direct affronts to their personal space. The hoarder views the person trying to help them as a bully, and often ignorant.
To conclude our article, it’s time for an explanation about why the syndrome has its name as such. Diogenes disease is perhaps incorrectly named. Diogenes, according to Greek legend, was a beggar who lived in a barrel in ancient Athens.
Diogenes had one possession: his cup, which he used to drink water. Diogenes was well known for his curmudgeonly behavior to anyone who approached him, and according to legend, even snubbed Alexander the Great by asking him to move out of the way of the sun as he was basking in it while laying outside of his barrel.
Diogenes never bathed, often comparing himself to a dog– no shame, no cleanliness, no possessions, and no acknowledgment of any worldly status or even worldly existence outside of his immediate surroundings.
In short, the mythical figure of Diogenes has little in common with the hoarding and squalor of Diogenes syndrome seniors today, but the name has stuck nonetheless.
Seniors need help, but they’re often left to fend for themselves. Over 8 million seniors get support from long term care services yearly. Support agencies aren’t always going to be around when seniors need their help, though. That’s why caregivers are teaming up to create a care community where their efforts can be shared to help seniors: Lotsa Helping Hands (LHH).
Lotsa Helping Hands to The Rescue
LHH is a care organization system that lets caregivers form care communities to help out the people they love. With LHH, you’ll be able to have easy communication with your loved ones, your helpers, the other people in your community, and plan around obstacles to solve them as painlessly as possible.
How is this possible? Lotsa Helping Hands has a website, app, and, most importantly, a great community that’s ready for you to join. You’ll be able to deliver great care to your loved ones without having to pay a dime.
Features
Where is LHH adding value to your care routine, though? In short, everywhere. Using Lotsa’s tools, you’ll be powerfully hooked into the cutting edge of providing care. You won’t need to worry about people you love being in need for lack of help.
Care Calendar
The biggest feature that you’ll make the most use out of with Lotsa is the Calendar. With the Calendar, you’ll have very granular control over who is taking care of which aspect of your relative’s care on what day and for how long.
The potential of the care calendar is nearly limitless. You can easily put important events like:
Doctor’s appointments
Scheduled visits
House cleanings
Birthdays
Recurring appointments
Lunch dates
The calendar lets you assign who gets to do what when it comes to your relative’s care. If you think that one person on your care team would be a better fit for a given task than another, you can assign them based on their ability on the calendar.
Easy Communication and Relative Support
Communicating with your relatives and the rest of their care team can often be a quagmire of emails, text messages, and other forms of communication that requires playing telephone. Lotsa removes the disorganization by locating all of the caregiving information into one single place. Seniors can view the information on Lotsa, too, allowing them to be an active participant in their care if they feel like they’re up to the task.
With the help of Lotsa’s communication and support systems, everyone will be on the same page about what they should be doing to support your loved ones. If someone in your care community is struggling, it’s also very easy to reach out and offer your support.
Small signals of support can uplift people more than you might think, and you’ll be perfectly enabled to offer your goodwill with Lotsa. After a fall or an illness, these small signals of support could uplift you, too. With Lotsa, there’s no limitation on who can provide support of this sort, so there’s no chance for anyone to start feeling isolated after they experience a loss of mobility or something similar.
Caregiver Support
Helpers have a lot to teach each other, but rarely do they have a place to exchange tips. Lotsa offers that place in the Helper forums, where helpers everywhere can speak with each other about what works, what doesn’t work, and why.
By enabling helper to helper communication, Lotsa lets everyone on your care team up their game and provide a higher quality of care to your relatives and loved ones. Learning from other helpers is also a great way of kindling relationships with others and forming broader caregiving communities that may help each other out in the future.
Track Your Progress
Via Lotsa’s photo gallery and other progress tracking features, you can chronicle your care team’s successes and your relatives’ happiness over time. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, it might be worth taking a few pictures before using Lotsa so that your team can compare the night and day difference.
Tracking your progress is important because it’ll give you an undeniable record of how powerful well-organized care can be. Especially if you’re skeptical about having a central hub for caregiving, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the photo album’s chronicling of your increasing ability to organize care.
A Care Calendar Makes Life Easier
The calendar is one of the core features of Lotsa that you’ll use to make your loved ones have a more comfortable life. Via the calendar, you can integrate concepts like meal calendars, medical calendars, social calendars, and other events so that your senior has a comprehensively attended to lifestyle.
Especially for core life functions like eating and getting medical attention, Lotsa enables your care team to make sure that the ball never gets dropped to the detriment of your relative. For seniors, Lotsa provides peace of mind—everything is scheduled and accounted for in an easy to understand way, so they won’t need to worry about gaps in coverage.
Often lifting the burden of anxiety about their care can massively improve the happiness and contentedness of seniors, which results in them needing less care and being more cheerful to their helpers.
Not Just for Seniors
Seniors can become an empowered member of their care team and their community using Lotsa, but it’s also an extremely powerful tool for helpers, friends and family, and community volunteers looking to pitch in.
Caregivers
Helpers using Lotsa get the advantage of having all their care duties located under one hood and with easy communications between members of the team. Likewise, helpers can directly communicate to seniors as frequently as they’d like to make sure that they don’t get lonely.
Horizontal communication from distinct caregiving groups is also possible with Lotsa. If the caregiving group responsible for providing meals is running late, they can drop a line to the helpers or family members that are currently with the senior to let them know. Likewise, seniors can communicate to their helpers that they’re in a spot of trouble and might need assistance sooner than scheduled.
Friends and Family
Friends and family are also some of the primary users of Lotsa because it gives them the ability to have a clear line of communications with their caregiving team, their senior, and other members of the caregiving community that may be able to offer them emotional support or technical tips on senior care.
Friends and family are core to using Lotsa effectively, as they’ll be the ones making the most use of the calendar and progress tracking photo albums—who wouldn’t want a lot of pictures with their smiling senior?
Volunteers
Community volunteers can also get their hands dirty using Lotsa. If anyone in the community is looking for a chance to pitch in, they’ll find plenty on the calendar or in the forums. Volunteers can fill gaps in helper coverage, help friends and family understand their senior’s challenges a bit more, and elevate themselves with the joy of community service.
Often, volunteers can give a new face for your senior to befriend and interact with. Integrating more volunteers into your family’s caregiving strategy is a great way to keep your senior’s life a bit more dynamic, which is good for their health.
If your family is looking for a volunteer opportunity, Lotsa will provide you with a limitless number within your broader care community. You’ll be able to join with other members of the website to volunteer to make seniors’ lives easier, happier, and healthier. Volunteers can organize their efforts just like helpers, meaning that everyone is fully up to date about who will be providing what service on what day.
How to Get Started
With all these features and people that are involved in Lotsa, you might be getting the impression that it’s a complicated system to get rolling. Lotsa is incredibly simple to use, and to prove it, here are the steps you’ll need to take to get your community up and running within ten minutes:
Start tracking your progress with the photo gallery
Start using LHH to coordinate care
Coordinate with other members as needed
Never Go Without Help
Lotsa Helping Hands is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a way to coordinate your senior’s care. With Lotsa, you’ll get a central platform that you, your friends and family, seniors, and helpers can collaborate on to make sure that there aren’t any gaps in care. Given that Lotsa is free, what do you have to lose by signing up and making a community today?
Seniors are prone to many different digestive disorders, but even in spite of these disorders, are probably reluctant to give up their daily coffee habit. Thankfully, there’s a solution which will allow seniors to retain their coffee habit and its proven benefits while avoiding the downsides: low acid coffee.
Reduced acid coffee or acid-free coffee is a modern chemical marvel which removes one of the least desirable flavor and health elements from coffee: acid. Acid ruins the flavor of many different coffees and also is the source of most (but not all) of the potential health issues caused by coffee consumption. In this article, we’ll talk about how low acid or no acid coffee might be a healthier choice for your senior.
At least 60% of the adult population suffer from acid reflux each year. For seniors, this percentage is even higher thanks to a reduced ability of the body to effectively process acids. The acid in coffee also causes the infamous coffee heartburn, tooth decay, and general stomach perturbations.
Coffee acidity typically makes the coffee itself taste worse and varies extensively from bean to bean. If your senior is having issues with coffee acidity, avoiding espresso beans is a must—espresso beans are typically much more acidic than other coffee beans. Dark roasts are the way to go, and we’ll suggest a few later on. First, let’s discuss how digestive disorders in seniors can be exacerbated by the acid in coffee.
Seniors & Food-Related Digestive Disorders
Because they’re not as capable of digestion as younger people, seniors are prone to several food-related digestive disorders. These disorders include acid reflux (GERD), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), ulcers, constipation, diarrhea, and nausea.
Acid Reflux
Acid reflux, or GERD, is common, even in people who aren’t seniors. Coffee is a notorious cause of acid reflux, however. We’ve all been there: the extremely unpleasant burning sensation in the throat, nausea, chest pain, and other painful and uncomfortable symptoms which occur after consumption of acid rich foods.
Acid reflux is a hassle for most people, but in seniors, it can be dangerous. Acid reflux damages the lining of internal membranes which food passes through, meaning that after reflux episodes it can be painful to eat normal and nonacidic foods. This can cause seniors to lose precious weight, which is a critical indicator of their general health.
Acid reflux can massively reduce a senior’s standard of living, often invisibly. Be on the lookout for seniors who seem to be losing weight for no discernible reason, or making gagging motions with their lower throat. Quick remedies include drinking a lot of water or over the counter acid-nullifying products.
Try not to use the over the counter acid nullifying products unless your senior is having a bad acid reflux episode. The flip side of using the over the counter products for acid reflux like Tums or Pepto Bismol is that they can cause other gastrointestinal disturbances which can hurt your senior later on, once the acid reflux episode has passed.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
IBD includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, all of which are unpleasant syndromes which cause extreme gastrointestinal discomfort. These syndromes aren’t linked directly to acidity or coffee consumption, though in some cases acidity can aggravate pre-existing symptoms and there’s some evidence that coffee can provide a protective effect against developing these diseases.
The main point here is to avoid aggravating your senior’s IBD or other bowel issues by consuming coffee with a high level of acidity. The acidity will cause the fragile state of the compromised gastrointestinal tract to react badly, and likely cause irritation which extends from the bowels up through the stomach and into the esophagus.
This cluster of diseases have an extremely negative impact on the senior’s quality of life and are often episodic. If acids in coffee are one of your senior’s triggers for an inflammatory episode, that means that any acid in coffee must not be drank. Days or weeks of discomfort simply aren’t worth a cup of coffee.
In rare instances, IBD and its associated diseases can be lethal. Like with acid reflux, one of the signs that your senior may be silently suffering from IBD is unexplained weight loss. Often, it’s too embarrassing to complain about the symptoms of IBD or too difficult to describe exactly where the discomfort is, so be sure to be on the lookout. Finally, flare-ups of IBD aren’t necessarily easy to correlate with drinking coffee containing acid, so be sure to get a physician to make a diagnosis to be sure.
Ulcers
Ulcers are more common in people that consume lots of highly acidic foods and drinks. In seniors, ulcers are areas of irritation within the stomach lining that can be caused by excess coffee intake. Ulcers may or may not be a chronic condition, and they don’t form overnight.
Like many other issues plaguing seniors as a result of excess acid consumption, ulcers can be silently harming your senior and cause them to lose weight via lowered appetite due to nausea after eating or drinking. It can also be hard to diagnose an ulcer without a medical imaging scan, so it’s best to try to avoid them in the first place.
If your senior has a history of getting ulcers and is complaining of abdominal pain, nausea, excess gas, or insomnia because of their stomach issues, you should get them to a doctor and see whether their coffee consumption is the cause of their ulcers.
Constipation
Seniors are extra prone to constipation because of the reduced efficiency of their gut motility cells. Coffee or prune juice are traditionally excellent treatments for constipation, but in rare instances, coffee can cause or worsen constipation via its acidity.
The cause and effect should be easy to figure out here: your senior will drink coffee, then soon complain about being blocked. There’s no guarantee that a switch to acid-free coffee will solve this issue if it’s a chronic one, but it’s worth a shot.
Diarrhea
Seniors who drink too much coffee or who drink coffee too quickly are likely to encounter bouts of diarrhea, causing them to be uncomfortable and potentially lose weight or become dehydrated. If it’s the acidity of the coffee that the senior is drinking that is causing diarrhea, the solution is to switch to a lower-acid coffee.
If your senior is simply drinking too much coffee, advise them to cool down for a while—or at least drink a cup of water and eat a snack with each unit of coffee to avoid becoming depleted.
These benefits are substantial and warrant finding a tasty low or no acid coffee bean for your senior’s enjoyment. The biggest benefit is that a low acidity coffee will avoid triggering your senior’s acid related health issues, which can massively impact their standard of living and enjoyment of life. It’s no fun to have an irritated gastrointestinal tract, and it tends to prevent seniors from enjoying their favorite activities and eventually becomes medically dangerous as a result of weight loss, dehydration, isolation, and tissue damage.
Don’t let your senior suffer because of the wrong coffee bean—picking a bean that can give the satisfaction of coffee without the risk of triggering a health problem is relatively easy, and we’ll help you in the sections below.
How to Identify Coffee with Low Acidity Levels
The acidity of coffee will vary from bean to bean, but there are a few general tips which will help you locate the better coffee for your senior. First, avoid all espresso beans. Espresso beans tend to be much higher in acid content than other coffee beans and cannot be non-acidic coffee.
This means that you should avoid buying arabica cultivar coffee beans unless they’re specifically marketed as having highly reduced acid content or no acid content whatsoever. You can usually determine the cultivar by reading the vessel of the coffee beans. Robusta cultivar beans are typically less acidic, but there’s no ironclad guarantee, just rules of thumb.
As far as the taste goes, coffee that tastes acidic is known for the way that it invigorates the tongue, with what some describe as an electric sensation. If you sample a cup of coffee and immediately detect this—or a churning of your gut—there’s a good chance that the coffee has a high acidity and isn’t suitable for senior consumption.
Though human experimentation isn’t ethical, it goes without saying that you should probably sample the coffee that you’re going to offer to your senior as a low acid alternative to ensure that the taste agrees with the marketing. Even if you’re not an experienced coffee drinker, you can easily discern the high acidity of an espresso from the low acidity of a dark French roast. Lower acidity coffees will taste more like the dark French roast than the espresso as a rule.
If you’re science inclined, it’s easy enough to perform litmus tests to get measurements of how acidic different types of coffee are. While certainly a fun learning opportunity for younger relatives, your senior relatives may not appreciate the turning of their kitchen into a laboratory.
If squinting at coffee boxes or doing chemistry isn’t for you, opt for one of the established low or no acid coffee beans that are on the market. These beans come with the guarantee of low or no acidity as their primary feature and make up for their weaknesses in flavor with their guaranteed healthiness for your senior.
Best Low Acid Coffee Brands
Thankfully, some different companies produce low or no acid coffees which your senior will love. We stand by these companies and their products, and we can promise that your senior will love a steaming hot cup from any one of them.
You can find your senior’s favorite roast and type of bean in any of the offerings from the companies below, just make sure that the low acid promise extends to the bean that you end up buying.
Trucup
Trucup offers reduced acid coffees in six different roasts. You can purchase Trucup’s offerings as whole bean, ground up, or as single-serving K-cups, which is a nice extra touch if your senior has the right machine at home. Trucup coffees are palatable and will give your senior the benefits of coffee without having to suffer from the penalties associated with acid unless they drink too much.
For seniors that are extremely sensitive to acid and enjoy drinking large volumes of coffee, Trucup may be a bit of a gamble.
Don Pablo Subtle Earth Organic
Don Pablo’s Subtle Earth Organic Coffee isn’t specifically advertised as a low-acid coffee, and it is an arabica cultivar bean. While it does have a great flavor profile, its acid content is higher than the other offerings that we’ll discuss today.
This bean is perfect for seniors who only have a small problem with acid, and who are sticklers for a good taste. Don Pablo’s coffee is very smooth, has a great array of chocolatey earthy flavors, and has an excellent dark roast—which you should buy for your senior if you’re concerned about acid content in the coffee.
As an added benefit, the Don Pablo line of coffees are all organically harvested and procured via fair trade. While these likely aren’t huge concerns for your senior and their coffee consumption habits, it’s important to buy from sustainable sources so that the seniors of the future have a chance to taste low acidity coffee, too.
Puroast Coffee
Puroast Coffee offers what it claims is a 70% reduction in the amount of acid contained in the coffee bean. It also claims to have seven times as many antioxidants as other coffee beans, making them a coffee that should be healthier than its counterparts even if acid isn’t a concern. It’s far from certain that your senior will benefit from the increased antioxidants inside Puroast’s coffee, but they can’t hurt.
Puroast does still have some acid remaining, but your senior will probably love their beans and have no health issues unless they’re particularly sensitive to the small amounts of acid that remain.
Healthwise
Healthwise Coffee offers TechnoRoasted™ coffee beans which reduces their acidity to within the range of mineral water. While this reduction doesn’t make Healthwise’ coffee beans acid-free, it does make them the winners of the lowest acid quantity on this list.
Healthwise Coffee is suitable for the seniors that are the most vulnerable to acidity within their coffee bean. You’d have to drink quite a large amount of Healthwise Coffee to have to suffer from any negative effects resulting from its acidity as a senior.
If we give them the benefit of the doubt and interpret their percentages as absolute pH values (which is the correct way of expressing the metric), we can see that their coffee beans are indeed quite low in acidity, though they’re a few hairs more acidic than Healthwise’s offerings.
If your senior struggles with acid in their coffee, Tieman’s beans offer a large selection which will probably allow them to avoid acid related issues when they have their coffee.
Say Goodbye to Acid
Thankfully, if your senior slips up and has coffee with a higher acid content once in a while, it probably isn’t a big deal. Most of the damages caused by higher acidity in coffee reside after a day or two, and if your senior has managed themselves well, they’ll likely be back to tip top shape in no time flat after a brief encounter with acid.
It’s a lot easier to avoid slip-ups if you provide your senior with a few different acid-free coffee options, though. Having multiple different acid free coffees on hand will let your senior enjoy the feeling of making choices and ferreting out favorites among the different beans we’ve suggested.
Finding a low acid coffee for your senior is a major health issue that you shouldn’t take lightly if your senior loves coffee. The coffee itself is a great mood lifter and is broadly healthy, and your senior deserves to enjoy a warm cup of earthy liquid if they have their entire lives. Just opt for one of the brands which we’ve suggested here, and your senior will be ready to enjoy the tasty and healthier coffee that won’t exacerbate their symptoms or start new problems.
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