Young Caregivers – A Startling Amount of Kids are Taking Care of Adults This may surprise you but about 1.4 million children between ages 8 and 18 are caregivers nationwide. Most often, the family member is a parent or grandparent, with a condition such as Alzheimer’s disease or dementia; heart,...
Caregiving
10 Steps to Coordinated Care for an Aging Loved One – Smilecast 113
10 Steps to Coordinated Care for an Aging Loved One It takes a village to care for an older adult especially if one lives with several chronic conditions. Experts in caregiving recommend to family caregivers to start planning early, long before a parent or older relative needs assistance, because if...
Caregiver Stress May Lead to Those Living with Dementia Dying Sooner – Smilecast 108
Caregiver Stress – Dementia patients may die sooner if family caregivers are mentally stressed People living with dementia may actually die sooner if their family caregivers are mentally stressed, according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley. From 2007 until 2016, UC Berkeley researchers tracked the mortality of...
How to Help People Who Are Grieving – Smilecast 105
In Grieving: How To Help A Senior Handle The Loss Of A Loved One Losing a spouse is a terribly difficult thing to go through at any age, but for seniors, the loss may hit particularly hard. Going through decades together builds a strong bond that many of us can...
Smilecast 104 – My Interview with Maggie Linton on Sirius XM
Maggie Linton Interview The following Smilecast is taken from an interview I did several years ago with Maggie Linton of Sirius XM. She was an informed host, read my book and asked intelligent questions. We covered the usual; assortment of topics about aging, senior care and caregiving. I shared my...
Social Isolation – A Growing Epidemic Among Seniors – Smilecast 91
Social Isolation – A Growing Epidemic Among Seniors (reprinted from my HuffPost50 Blog) According to the AARP, 51 percent of people over 75 live alone. Twenty-six percent face an increased risk of death due to subjective feeling of loneliness. More than 8 million adults age 50 and older are affected...
5 Reasons Why You Should Understand Caregiver Stress – Smilecast 87
5 Reasons Why You Should Understand Caregiver Stress Caregiver stress – a topic often left unspoken, particularly with the emotions involved. Most especially for family caregivers, with guilt and confusion settling in when the line of duty and personal time seems to blur. As such, identifying several reasons on why...
4 Things You Need to Know About a New Dementia Diagnosis – Smilecast 83
4 Things You Need to Know About a New Dementia Diagnosis The recent PBS documentary, Alzheimer’s: Every Minute Counts, sounded an alarm and a wakeup call to the devastation being caused by dementia, including Alzheimer’s. As more and more people become impacted, it’s important to help family members, including children...
The Working Family Caregiver – from Healing Ties Radio – Smilecast 76
The Working Family Caregiver Balancing work and family caregiving is a daunting task. I was a guest on Chris MacLellan podcast, Healing Ties, earlier this year where we talked about the issue of the working family caregiver. Caregiving costs employers $34 billion annually. And you may be surprised to know...
Homebound Seniors Twice as Likely to Develop Alzheimer’s – Smilecast 72
Homebound Seniors More at Risk for Dementia Homebound seniors are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease as more active individuals. Investigators at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago followed 1,294 seniors from two separate studies. None of the study subjects exhibited dementia symptoms at the beginning of either study....