grow older better

Tag: elderly

  • Heat Waves Are Killers

    droughtEach year the earth is getting hotter and we are experiencing major heat waves and crop killing droughts.

    While we hear, usually well in advance, about taking precautions for tornadoes, hurricanes and blizzards – we don't seem to get the same warnings through the media about heat waves.

    BUT:

    Natural disasters such as hurricanes, blizzards or tornadoes might be more dramatic and attention grabbing than a heat wave, but in reality, the heat may be capable of claiming more lives than even these violent storms.

    The drama of hurricanes may be great TV but the deaths from heat are greater in number and do not get as much coverage.

    Maybe because heat pictures are less interesting?

    And deaths from heat are not pretty?

    And sadly – maybe because most heat related deaths are older poorer people?

    Living alone, being poor, and being in an apartment building, hot sun on apartmentsare factors in heat related deaths.  the poor are congregated usually in the not-too-good parts of cities and no matter what is the temperature, residents do not open their windows because crime tends to enter.

    Open windows are an invitation to crime. That's a sad statistic about modern cultures. And older, poorer people do not tend to use air conditioners because either they aren't supplied or they fear they won't be able to pay the high electric bill.

    Please – if you have poor or elderly people living near you – do check on them.

    Most towns and cities have a cooling center where they can spend the day and some may have night services.

    We have overnight warming shelters for the extremely cold temperatures. We should have equivalent cooling shelters for the extremely hot weather.


  • You Will Likely Live to 90

    What will you do with all the extra years?

    older_woman_at_computer

    Right now there are nearly 2 million people in the USA who are in their 90s and it is projected that by 2050 three will be 9 million of us over 90.

    What will the extra years be like for us?

    Many "seniors" are already worried about outliving their incomes and  adding more years to their lives may add more expenses but not necessarily more income.

    Living into one's 90's or 100's is no longer the stuff of legends 

    • it is happening to us
    • and happening right now
    • and will continue to happen

    Will you just grow old?

    Or grow older better by:

    Eating well

    Exercising

    Taking supplements [but make sure they are not made from rocks and petroleum]

    Being social

    Hanging out with friends on your computer

    Continuing to work [by finding a new career] – even if you don't need the  money

    Playing


    SMILING!!

     

    Thoughts? Comments?


     

  • Why does the USA treat it’s elderly like this?

    How terrible – but how American.

    Corporate bottom lines take precedence over care for the least able to care for themselves – children and the elderly! MONEY is the prime mover in our country thee days….and id you are not among the millionaires – forget getting help! You just don’t count…well except for the money the corporations can make off you…

    And ask yourself – why do we continue to allow this?

    From the New York Times

    September 23, 2007
    More Profit and Less Nursing at Many Homes
    By CHARLES DUHIGG

    Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.

    The facility’s managers quickly cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier, records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell, according to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.

    The investors and operators were soon earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes.

    Residents fared less well. Over three years, 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court. Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staff levels were below mandatory minimums. When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a leg brace that was broken.

    “They’ve created a hellhole,” said Vivian Hewitt, who sued Habana in 2004 when her mother died after a large bedsore became infected by feces.

    Habana is one of thousands of nursing homes across the nation that large Wall Street investment companies have bought or agreed to acquire in recent years.

    Those investors include prominent private equity firms like Warburg Pincus and the Carlyle Group, better known for buying companies like Dunkin’ Donuts.

    As such investors have acquired nursing homes, they have often reduced costs, increased profits and quickly resold facilities for significant gains.

    But by many regulatory benchmarks, residents at those nursing homes are worse off, on average, than they were under previous owners, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data collected by government agencies from 2000 to 2006.

    Full article HERE

    glyconutrients, healthy aging, growing older, aging, nutrition, exercise, eating properly,