Reduce the risk of falling (part 2)

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San Diego Union Tribune
R.J. Ignelzi



IMPAIRED VISION. Age-related vision diseases such as cataracts or glaucoma can alter depth perception, peripheral vision and susceptibility to glare, which increase the risk of falls.
Prevention tips:
Have regular checkups by an ophthalmologist.
Use color and contrast to define balance-aiding objects in the home, such as grab bars and handrails.
Clean eyeglasses often.


MEDICATIONS. Sedatives, antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs can contribute to falls by reducing mental alertness, worsening balance and gait.
Prevention tips:
Know the common side effects of all medications taken.
Talk with your doctor about how to reduce your chances of falling by using the lowest effective dosage, regularly assessing the need for continued medication and using a walking aid while taking some medications.
Limit alcohol consumption when taking medications.


ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS. At least one-third of all falls involve common hazards in the home.
Prevention tips:
Repair cracks or gaps in sidewalks and driveways.
Install adequate lighting by doorways and along walkways leading to doors.
Avoid throw rugs.
Maintain night lights or motion-sensitive lighting throughout the home.
Install grab bars on walls around the tub and beside the toilet.
Add nonskid mats or appliqués to bathtub or shower stall. Add a bath or shower seat.
Avoid using floor polish or wax to reduce slick surfaces.
Use television remote controls and cordless phones to minimize having to rush to get the phone or getting up to change channels.
Spread out large furniture so you can easily move around it.
Adjust the height of the bed to make it easy to get in and out of.
Install tightly fastened handrails running the entire length and along both sides of stairs. Apply brightly colored tape to the face of steps to make them more visible.

Read all of How can I reduce the risk of falling?

Reduce the risk of falling (part 1)

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professinals,

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here are more interesting dementia brain boosting activities

San Diego Union Tribune
R.J. Ignelzi



When a senior citizen falls, the impact is more than the pain and impairment of a broken hip or head injury. For many aging adults, a fall could mean the beginning of the end of independence.
“Falls are the leading cause of death from injury among older adults. But even if falls aren't fatal, they're life-changing for this age group,” says Pam Smith, director for San Diego County Aging and Independence Services.
Falls are reported by one-third of all people 65 and older every year. Two-thirds of those who fall will fall again within six months. About 50 percent of the elderly who sustain a fall-related injury will be discharged to a nursing home rather than return home.
“Falls aren't inevitable as you age. People need to know that falls are preventable,” Smith says. “There are many things (seniors) and caregivers can do to minimize the risk of falls and improve safety. This can be life-saving stuff.”
Here's a look at the five key risk factors of falls among older adults and how to prevent them.


OSTEOPOROSIS. A decrease in bone density makes bones more prone to fractures. Brittle bones not only break after a fall, but can also break when stressed and in turn cause a fall.
Prevention tips:
Eat or drink sufficient calcium.
Get enough vitamin D to enhance the absorption of calcium.
Do weight-bearing exercise regularly.


LACK OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. Failure to exercise can result in poor muscle tone, decreased strength and loss of bone mass, all of which contribute to falls.
Prevention tips:
Walk, swim or do other exercise at least every other day to increase muscle strength and improve balance.
Practice gentle stretching or yoga with a class or DVD.
Wear proper-fitting, supportive shoes with low heels or rubber soles.

more tips tomorrow

or go to How can I reduce the risk of falling?

A touching video about Alzheimer's

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professinals,

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here are more interesting dementia brain boosting activities

Brian Willie

I Know."

I'm a bit overwhelmed to be quite honest. It was just released
and it's already quickly sweeping the internet and has had thousands of views!

Emails and comments have been pouring in. I'm so pleased that it has already
touched so many people.

You can watch it here:

Short Alzheimer's video

Movies are meant to move you, and to make you think. This is a very
special project for me. So often caregivers forget to take care of
themselves.

You may feel hopeless watching the man or woman you
know changing before your eyes. But just always keep in mind that
they are still the person you love and will always live on through
you.

Please watch and if you like what you see, I would appreciate it if you pass it on
to families, friends and co-workers.

A Fair Wage for Caregivers

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Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here are more interesting dementia articles and activities,

New York Times

Change is too slow coming for the nation’s one million home care aides. In 2007, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a 1975 federal labor regulation that defines home care aides as “companions.” That definition exempts home care employers — often for-profit agencies — from having to pay the federal minimum wage or time and a half for overtime.

In explaining their decision, the justices pointed out that the law gives the Labor Department, not the court, the power to change the regulation. Yet, more than two years later, the regulation still stands.

Last month, 15 senators sent a letter to Hilda Solis, President Obama’s labor secretary, urging her to eliminate the “companion” exemption. A month earlier, 37 House members sent a similar letter. But beyond a statement from Ms. Solis expressing concern and pledging to look into the matter, there has been no progress.

Not surprisingly, home care aides — who typically help to feed, dress and move their elderly and disabled clients, in addition to keeping house for them — remain among the most underpaid and overworked in the labor force. They usually manage to make above the nationwide minimum wage ($6.55 an hour now, rising to $7.25 an hour later this month), in large part because many states impose higher minimums than the feds.

Still, most make below $10 an hour. And they are routinely denied overtime pay. Federal rules do not demand it, and only 16 states and the District of Columbia require any extra pay for extra work. Lack of overtime pay is especially unjust in the home care field because extra long shifts, including overnight stays, are common.

Taxpayers ultimately make up for the low pay because many home care aides rely on food stamps and other public assistance. The public pays in other ways, too: turnover is high, undermining the quality of care and driving up overall costs.

The Labor Department got off to a slow start when Republican senators held up Ms. Solis’s confirmation, in part, to protest her support for unions. But further delay raises the danger that the plight of home care aides will get mired in the broader debate over health care costs.

Another danger is that industry opposition to better pay will gain renewed traction in today’s troubled economy. Some home care employers say that having to pay extra for overtime could drive them out of business. In states where varying degrees.....read all of A Fair Wage for Caregivers

A mean and hurtful Alzheimers parent

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Caring.com

Katemom

My mom was diagnosed with alzheimer's several years ago and begun on medication. She did ok and the progression was slow.About a year and a half ago, she had other health concerns and we had to stop all medications. Last spring, she asked me and my family to move in with her. We sold our house and moved 2 teenagers, 2 cats and me and my husband into her home. She was willing to allow us to change the bedrooms for the kids, and make the living room into our bedroom so she could keep her master bedroom. She said whatever it took, she was afraid to stay alone anymore. She has never admited to her diagnosis, and adamantly denies it. Now that we have sold a lot of our possessions and moved in, she is very possessive. She won't give up things that haven't been used in 50 years, but we have to get rid of a lot. After moving in, she changed her mind about changing things. The kids rooms couldn't be changed, painted, pictures or posters hung, etc, without major arguements. Now, the only thing I hear is how their rooms arent clean and why don't i do something about it. I am so tired. Their rooms are fine, they are a little cluttered, but are clean. She won't give us closet space for storage so we still have things sitting around in our bedroom, because there is nowhere to put it. We've learned to just walk around it, and its really not that bad. Yet she complains about our rooom, too. We now lock it every day. She was always a neat freak, and spent my childhood cleaning all the time. My father is the one that spent time with me. I was a single mom for a long time and had to do things differently and I put my children before housework. We want to paint my 15 year old's room a different color than white, and hang pictures, but she won't allow it. The house is in my name, and whenever we try to do something, she says I just want her house, and her money, and she'll just find somewhere else to live and get out of my way. She always starts arguments in the morning before I have to leave for work and she starts crying. Then she tells my husband about it, then my 20 year old son, about how mean I am. She makes us feel like it is definetly her house, and we are here to serve her. I feel guilty when I get upset with her, but I can't help it. We moved here instead of moving her to us because this is the family home and the house was larger than ours, and more easily adaptable. She tells me how wonderful my brother is because he's always outside working at his house. Of course, he's the one who wanted me here, and his kids are grown and gone. I guess I am just really frustrated and tired of being the bad guy. She can be so hurtful in what she says to me, and when she tells her friends about how mean I am. We cook and clean for her, do her laundry, fix her medicines, take her to her doctors appointments, and to her hair salon every week. All I do in my free time, is take her or my 15 year old somewhere. I also work full time. When I get home, I am tired. She wants me to be perfect, but I am not. I am just feeling so alone right now. She used to be fun to be around, and now she's hateful all the time. You have to watch what you say, or she takes it wrong. I don't know what I am asking from this, but I just need someone to say they understand, and maybe I am not the only one who's parent is so mean to them. I do care what people say about me, and it really bothers me that they think I moved here to get her stuff. We don't talk about the alzheimers, so most of her friends don't know the real story.

Do you have any thoughts go to caring.com hurtful Alzheimers parent

Family caregiving: when relationships add to the challenge

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Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here are more interesting dementia articles and activities,

Sharon Brothers MSW

Are you a new family caregiver?

View a FREE training module Becoming a Caregiver

We've been discussing some of the most challenging aspects of family caregiving here among our team and we're convinced that the relationship shift is probably right at the top.

Shifting from spouse and equal partners to care provider and recipient must be incredibly difficult. I know from my own experience that shifting from autonomous parent-adult child relationship to one where the parent is dependent on the child for care is challenging and disconcerting.

What about when one sibling sees the parent as smiling, happy and capable (the face she presents to them) while another sees a despondent, helpless elder (the face presented to sibling #2).

Then there's the daughter that feels the need to resolve issues from childhood with a parent before it's too late; issues that bring up long-buried feelings of anger, pain and helplessness.

I remember Emma who, suffering with advanced dementia, needed physical reassurance almost continually throughout the day. She'd hug us frequently, hold our hands and, in general, give and accept physical affection. I didn't think much of it until one day her daughter came into my office and told me, "I don't remember my mother ever hugging me as a child. She simply did not do that - ever." It broke my heart to realize that this warm, loving woman had lived so many years of her life unable to give or receive affection from those closest to her.

As we're working on creating materials to train and support family caregivers we're curious: what's the biggest relationship challenge you've experienced in caregiving? How did you resolve this challenge - how did it affect the caregiving experience?

Alzheimer's disease could be tackled by treating patients' livers

Alzheimer's disease could be tackled by treating the liver of sufferers, so they can dispose of a toxic protein linked to the illness.
Telegraph.co.UK
By Lucy Cockcroft


Scientists believe that helping the liver to clear amyloid-beta protein from the blood could provide a new way of combating the devastating effects of Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia.

Alzheimer's, which causes progressive loss of memory and mental faculties, affects almost 417,000 people in Britain, including fantasy author Terry Pratchett who is campaigning for more research into the disease.

A key characteristic of the disease is the accumulation of neuron-damaging amyloid-beta (A-beta) in the brain.

New research shows that levels of the protein in the brain are affected by their levels in the peripheral blood stream.

Scientists in the US and Hong Kong manipulated the livers of laboratory rats to increase blood levels of amyloid-beta. One of the liver's primary jobs is to remove toxic substances from the blood stream.

The researchers found that raising A-beta blood levels slowed down the speed at which molecules of the protein were swept from the rats' brains.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, support the theory that freely circulating amyloid-beta concentrations outside the brain can regulate clearance rates inside the central nervous system.

Dr David Cook, from the University of Washington School of Medicine said: "We knew from previous work that the liver plays an important role in removing A-beta from the blood. So, we thought if we temporarily prevented liver-mediated clearance it might be possible to set or 'clamp' peripheral A-beta levels long enough to find out whether A-beta in the blood stream affects A-beta clearance from the brain.

"We were a bit surprised to see how effective this strategy was. Peripheral A-beta clearance immediately halted almost completely. For several years it has been suggested that the circulatory system can act like an A-beta sink. The data clearly show that the liver is the primary drain."

Co-author Dr Sum Lee, from the University of Hong Kong, said: "The liver influences virtually everything that happens in the body, so it is not far-fetched to imagine that in the future it may be possible to find ways to help the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients with their livers."

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "This new study shows us just how complex Alzheimer's disease is, suggesting.........read the whole article

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Caregiver Tips For Getting Through the Day

Ezine
By Rebecca Sharp Colmer

The duties of the caregiver usually change and increase over a period of time. One of the most difficult aspects of the caregiver role is that the job continues seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

One way to help caregivers get through the day is to set up a care plan and develop a routine.

The caregiver's care plan is very similar to the nurse's plan of care and the hospice plan of care. It is a daily record of the care and treatment of the care-receiver.

It provides a record of events that assist everyone on the care team. It also allows another caregiver to take your place fairly easily. With a written plan you don't have to rely on your memory.

A daily record will help both the caregiver and the care-receiver, and everyone on the care team. For any care plan to work, the care-receiver should be included in every possible aspect of the planning process. This may be difficultif the are receiver has Alzheimer's diseasor another dementia.

Then observation and a loosely stuctured routine might work best

To get started the family must determine who is going to be the primary caregiver. This person will have the main responsibility for the actual care.

Establishing a well-thought out care plan will help relieve stress for everyone involved. Many decisions will have to be made.

An evaluation of needs and activities can be done to assess and determine a baseline which will help determine the caregiver's duties.

These may include....read the whole article

click here for more ideas about activities

Hormone shows promise in reversing Alzheimer's disease, other dementias, and stroke

EurekAlert
Contact: Nancy Solomon

SLU researchers find strategy to get it past vigilant blood-brain barrier

ST. LOUIS -- Saint Louis University researchers have identified a novel way of getting a potential treatment for Alzheimer's disease, other dementias, and stroke into the brain where it can do its work.
"We found a unique approach for delivering drugs to the brain," says William A. Banks, M.D., professor of geriatrics and pharmacological and physiological science at Saint Louis University. "We're turning off the guardian that's keeping the drugs out of the brain."
The brain is protected by the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a gate-keeping system of cells that lets in nutrients and keeps out foreign substances. The blood-brain barrier passes no judgment on which foreign substances are trying to get into the brain to treat diseases and which are trying to do harm, so it blocks them without discrimination.
"The problem in treating a lot of diseases

New program aids dementia patients

Ventura County Stat
County News
Device emits signal to help locate person

By Kitty Dill
In the United States, most of those with dementia who wander are found within a mile and a half from their homes or care facilities, says Norma Featherston, area director for the Central Coast Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association.

But "about 40 percent are not found alive," she said.

That's one reason she is excited about a new tool available to help the estimated 12,400 people with dementia in Ventura County and their families.

On Tuesday, opening ceremonies will launch Project Life Saver, a safety program that will have its kickoff in Camarillo and is expected to expand.....read the whole story

Vitamin D: Dementia vs Parkinson's

Elderly people often have particularly low levels of Vitamin D. And new evidence suggests that those low levels could be linked to Parkinson's disease. It has also been shown that many with dementia also have low levels of Vitamin D

Researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine measured blood levels of the vitamin in 300 patients - a third each with either Parkinson's, Alzheimer's disease or neither.

As expected, insufficient levels of Vitamin D were common in each. But more of the Parkinson's patients (55 percent) had low levels than the Alzheimer's (41 percent) or the healthy controls (36 percent), they write in the current Archives of Neurology.

Moreover, all the participants lived in the South, most were white and most were tested in summer and fall - all factors known to help the skin produce Vitamin D from sunlight.

The findings, the researchers conclude, highlight the importance of...read this story

Thanks to By Don Sapatkin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Philly.com

Alzheimer's - Still Searching for the Cure

BRADENTONHERALD.COM
Phyllis Johnson

Alzheimer's disease sufferers and their families and friends haven't had much to celebrate in terms of new treatments for the disease in recent years. No vaccine against the disease has been developed. No new drugs or treatments have been proven to reverse the progress of the disease as it marches inevitably toward death for its victims.

It was understandable, therefore, that there was excitement at the Alzheimer Association's International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Chicago last July, when some promising results from drug trials were reported that appeared to present a new understanding of how the neurological disease works.

Scientists are beginning to segregate out different therapeutic targets and develop drugs that have....read the whole article

Clinical Trials: How you can make a difference with Alzheimers and other diseases

(NAPSI)-Many Americans may not realize it, but many of the treatments that save lives today are based on yesterday's clinical trials. Diseases that we are only aware of by name, such as smallpox and polio, have been eliminated because of medical research and testing. Advances in hypertension, diabetes and cancer have been powered by everyday people participating in clinical trials.

What Is A Clinical Trial?

A clinical trial is a process that seeks to answer specific questions with the goal of finding better ways to prevent, screen for, make diagnosis of or treat a disease. This process studies or tests in humans a new procedure (knee replacement), a drug (aspirin), a vaccine (HPV vaccine) or a device (MRI).

Clinical trials are important because they are how scientists can research ways to improve your health and quality of life. They can range from examining the effect of exercise on reducing blood pressure to determining if estrogen can prevent memory loss and Alzheimer's disease in women with a family history of Alzheimer's.

Clinical trials can prove to be crucial...

read more about clinical trials click here

Click here to learn about an Alzheimers clinical trial in Michigan