Western Pennsylvania Healthcare News

Covering healthcare news in the Pittsburgh region and beyond.

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Appreciating Age: Examples of Senior Care Around the World

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When was the last time you visited your grandparents? Without asking your parents or anyone else, do you know how they’re going to be spending their day? Where are they now and who’s taking care of them?

Sometimes, without meaning to, life gets in the way and you may forget about your grandparents for a time. Busy schedules, personal crises, sometimes they pile up.

Even during busy times, some people still find some way to take care of the senior members of their families, be it their parents or their grandparents. They register them in assisted living facilities where professionals can look after them every day. If they’re more comfortable at home, people can hire a caregiver to keep them company and update their residences to suit their needs, like buying tubs for the elderly.

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Checking In On Your Health As A Senior

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Bodies Mature With Age

If you work out and eat right perpetually, you’ll reach fullest flourish. But even the most healthy flower passes its period of bloom eventually. This is the consequence of entropy. Over time, systems of order break down. In terms of DNA, the process of aging can be watched directly, and even quantified in some ways.

Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/portrait-facial-hair-people-beard-3052641/

There’s an element in your DNA called telomerase. Telomerase acts sort of like the tape at the ends of a shoestring. When that tape wears out, the shoestring unravels. In this case, the shoestring is your DNA, and over time, telomerase breaks down, and DNA integrity begins to erode. This contributes to aging, and the erosion usually begins in a person’s late twenties to thirties, depending on lifestyle.

Now there are ways to augment telomerase dissolution. New medical techniques can halt the speed at which it breaks down. Additionally, lifestyle choices will help you to defer telomerase loss. Stress is a big factor in aging. It pushes the body and mind, stressing internal components, and eroding telomerase. Elimination of stress is key in achieving the length of years.

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6 Tips For Coping With Aging

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Everyone is getting older by the second, and we just have to embrace it. Aging might be a disturbing fact for some, as it comes with a lot of problems. These can be physical and emotional, but there are ways to cope with them all.

Knowing how to deal with your aging body is the key to growing old gracefully. We don’t want to lose our active status or our relevance in our golden years, so read on below for some tips:

1. Consulting

Growing older gracefully requires some work, and part of that is getting an expert opinion on your troubles. Aging does bring some health issues with it, but they’re not impossible to deal with. For instance, if you’re having hearing loss or some other issues with your ears, schedule an appointment with a hearing consultant straight away.

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Dying Patients Who Received Palliative Care Visited the ER Less

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Community-based palliative care – care delivered at home, not the hospital – was associated with a 50 percent reduction in emergency department visits for patients in their last year of life.  The results of an Australian study were published online February 3rd in Annals of Emergency Medicine (“The Association of Community-Based Palliative Care with Reduced Emergency Department Visits in the Last Year of Life Varies by Patient Factors”).

Researchers studied nearly 12,000 records for patients who died of cancer, heart failure, kidney failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and/or liver failures in Western Australia from 2009 to 2010. Dying patients visited the emergency department on average twice a year during their last year of life. The average number of emergency department visits was reduced when patients received palliative care.

“It is encouraging that palliative care was associated with reduced emergency department visits for five different diseases, so isn’t limited to just cancer or heart failure, for example,” said study lead Lorna Rosenwax, PhD. of Curtin University in Perth, Australia. “Most patients who were in their last year of life visited the emergency department at least once, with one person visiting 74 times in the space of a year.  Only about one-third (32 percent) of the patients we studied received community-based palliative care but they were much less likely to require emergency medical treatment as a result.” [Read more…]

Presbyterian SeniorCare Offers Alzheimer’s Support Groups

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Presbyterian SeniorCare is now offering two Alzheimer’s Support Groups that meet monthly in the region:

When: Last Tuesday of each month
Time: 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Where: Woodside Place, Presbyterian SeniorCare: 1215 Hulton Road, Oakmont, PA 15139
Contact: 412-826-4059

Presbyterian SeniorCare, in affiliation with the Alzheimer’s Association, offers monthly support and educational sessions. All are free of charge and open to the public. To RSVP, contact Jennifer Marasco Kuhn at 412-826-4059 or jmarasco@srcare.org. 

When: 2nd Tuesday of each month
Time: 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Where: Presbyterian SeniorCare, Hillsview Chapel: 835 South Main Street, Washington, PA 15301
Contact: 724-223-5745

Presbyterian SeniorCare, in affiliation with the Alzheimer’s Association, offers monthly support sessions for those looking to talk with someone who understands what it is like to deal with Alzheimer’s disease. All are free of charge and open to the public. The event will be held in the Hillsview Chapel at Presbyterian SeniorCare. For more information, contact Rena Tatka at 724-223-5745.