If you are patient, reliable, and possess basic life skills – like making a meal – we may have a job for you.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the second fastest growing position is personal and home care aides.

Tender Hearts at Home Senior Care’s research says demand for home caregivers is going to outpace supply. It projects a 76 percent increase in the personal and home care aides job category within a span of ten years. From 18,350 in 2006 to 32,250 in 2016.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population age 65 and older is projected to double between 2000 and 2050.

Do you think you have what it takes to be a caregiver?

Cincinnati’s Tender Hearts at Home Senior Care provides care for your aging loved ones. Please call us when your loved one needs help 513-234-0805. 24/7

If you see this lady turning clockwise you are using your right brain. If you see her tuning the other way, you are using left brain.  Some people do see both ways, but most people see it only one way.  See if you can make her go one way and then the other by shifting the brain’s current. BOTH DIRECTIONS CAN BE SEEN. 
Experimentation has shown that the two different sides or hemispheres of the brain are responsible for different manners of thinking. The following table illustrates the differences between left-brain and right-brain thinking:

I didn’t write any of the above material and have no idea who did, as it is in so many different places on the net.  What prompted me to post it here now was an article I just saw in Advertising Age Daily News.  It is on this very subject and was written by Al Ries.  I think that pretty much anything written by Al Ries is worthwhile to read.  Here is the link.

Researchers at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle, Washington following nearly 2,000 adults for 10 years found drinking fruit or vegetable juice more than three times a week cuts the risk of developing Alzheimer’s by 76 percent compared to drinking it less than once a week. They found having juice once or twice a week reduced risk by 16 percent.

Highlights from the study include:

“The theory is that the brain accumulates damage due to oxidation as we age, and if you can protect the brain from that damage you can protect the person from Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of dementia,” said Eric Larson, MD.

Researchers saw the protective benefits from any type of juice. The study also found there are more antioxidants in juice than in vitamin C and E supplements.

According to Dr. Larson, juice is made using parts of the fruit with the highest concentration of natural antioxidants. “The theory is the brain accumulates damage due to oxidation as we age and if you can protect the brain from that damage, you can protect the person from Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of dementia,” he said.

In most cases, juice is produced using the core, the seeds and the skin– parts of the fruit or vegetable people do not normally consume. The food is mashed together to create a concentrate. Juice is made in cold process, so nutrients aren’t damaged by heat. Juice will usually have a defined level of purity based on percentage of fruit juice. Juice should not be confused with squash, which is usually an artificial juice that can be diluted with water.

In theory, grape, apple and orange juices are very potent in antioxidants and could be the most effective at preventing Alzheimer’s disease, according to Dr. Larson. In the study, those who did not drink fruit juice, but ate several servings of fruit per week, saw some benefit. However, those who drank juice saw the most benefit.

Study participants who drank juice once or twice a week reduced their Alzheimer’s risk by 16 percent. Those who drank juice three times per week reduced their risk by 76 percent. Before you drink 10 glasses of orange juice each day, be aware there may be threshold for antioxidant consumption. Going above that amount may not necessarily bring benefits.

From Alzheimer’sreadingroom.com

Cincinnati’s Tender Hearts at Home Senior Care provides care for your aging loved ones. Please call us when your loved one needs help 513-234-0805. 24/7

Nationally, 23 percent of the nursing homes rated achieved just a “one-star” ranking overall (out of five). The ratings site, Nursing Home Compare is administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Nearly 16,000 nursing homes are included on the rankings site, which focuses on facilities that are certified to participate in Medicare or Medicaid. Both for-profit and non-profit homes are ranked.

Isn’t it time for a rating system like this for Senior Home Care Companies?

Cincinnati’s Tender Hearts at Home Senior Care provides care for your aging loved ones. Please call us when your loved one needs help 513-234-0805. 24/7

Martin Romoff used to rely on his voice to make a living as a Los Angeles tire salesman. But two decades of Parkinson’s disease muffled his speech and spoiled the art of easy conversation. Even his wife, Shirley, asked him to repeat himself over and over.
Then he learned about a special kind of voice training. For four one-hour sessions over a month, Romoff worked with a speech therapist in a program designed specifically to help people with Parkinson’s disease retain — or reclaim — the clarity of their speech.

Developers of the therapy, called the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (also known as LSVT or LOUD), say that by making a healthy, intensive effort to speak more loudly, people with Parkinson’s disease can regain control of their speaking voices. Although the program is now administered in 30 countries, the neuromuscular mechanisms behind its effects are still unclear. Nor have there been state-of-the-art, double-blind controlled studies to test how well it works.

Now researchers are studying LSVT in a small clinical trial that could help pinpoint how the program’s simple drill profoundly affects the speech system.

Parkinson’s disease afflicts 500,000 to 1 million Americans, most of whom are diagnosed after age 65. The disorder involves the death of brain cells that produce the nerve chemical dopamine, which helps carry commands from the brain’s muscle-control centers.

People with Parkinson’s disease move slowly, and their arms and legs may be rigid and shaken by tremors. Less well known is that Parkinson’s can also take away patients’ normal voice because it strikes vocal cord muscles as well. Speech becomes slurred, and voices soft, hoarse or shaky.

The problem can be tremendously isolating. “One of my patients in New York would say to me, ’If I have no voice, I have no life,’ ” says Lorraine Ramig, speech science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and one of LSVT’s developers.

Although up to nine out of 10 of people with Parkinson’s disease have speech and voice disorders (known collectively as dysarthria), only about 4% receive any type of speech therapy. Researchers have tried nonbehavioral approaches, such as implanting collagen into vocal cords and stimulating the brain with electrodes, but nothing has proved to have lasting success. In fact, some older types of brain stimulation have been shown to make dysarthria worse, not better, says Bruce Gerratt, professor of head and neck surgery at UCLA medical school.

The LSVT program, developed at the Lee Silverman Center for Parkinson’s Disease in Arizona, uses exercises that focus on a single, simple goal: producing a healthy, louder voice through extra effort.
“We tell people, ’Speak louder than you think you need to,’ ” says Cynthia Fox, a researcher at the National Center for Voice and Speech in Denver and vice president of the LSVT Foundation.

The focus on volume is “deceptively simple, but you get a lot of bang for your buck,” says Geralyn Schulz, a speech science professor at George Washington University. “Even without a speech therapist telling you to open your mouth wider, or take a deeper breath, or move your tongue more, you automatically do those things when you speak loud.”

That is the opposite of what normally happens with Parkinson’s patients, who generally make short and small movements: Handwriting gets tiny, walking strides get shorter, and speech suffers from a lack of bigness .

Also crucial, Ramig believes, is concentrating on a single aspect of speech. This keep-it-simple approach is especially relevant for Parkinson’s patients, who often have memory and learning problems.
To explore whether volume is the key, or if other simple goals can also work, Ramig and colleagues are conducting a clinical trial in Denver. Healthy volunteers and Parkinson’s patients will undergo either LSVT training or a program that targets articulation instead. Researchers hope to enroll a total of 80 patients; results are expected next year.

Scientists also need to get a better sense of how well LSVT works. Although small studies have shown promising results, larger-scale multicenter clinical trials of the therapy are lacking, Ramig says. It’s also not clear what affects an individual’s success with the program, including factors such as the patient’s age, time since diagnosis, cognitive abilities and stage of disease.

Nor do therapists know how long the effects will last.

After Martin Romoff completed the LSVT program about three years ago, he and his wife noticed that his voice was stronger. “Speaking was easier, and people understood me better,” Romoff says.
The positive effects lasted for a while, he says, but his voice has since slipped back into old patterns.
To help Romoff and others like him, Ramig and her colleagues are experimenting with Web cams, software programs and other technology to help patients continue their practice.

Parkinson’s: A focus on big movements
Parkinson’s patients can learn to “speak loud,” but can they also learn to “move big”?
Researchers are experimenting with training patients to take big steps, make large gestures and generally exert a grand effort in all movements. The goal is to combat the characteristic slowness of Parkinson’s disease — known as bradykinesia — by encouraging them to crank up the drive to their muscles, says Becky Farley, a physiology professor at the University of Arizona and a developer of the program. As with the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment for voice control, patients focus on a single goal: bigness.

In a study of 29 Parkinson’s patients and healthy volunteers, the new therapy program improved some facets of patients’ movements. Their strides were longer and their torso rotated more freely, both immediately after therapy and three months later. And they could remember to take bigger steps even when their attention was diverted elsewhere, such as having to recite the days of the week backward.
Early-stage patients saw better results than those with more advanced Parkinson’s, especially in walking speed.
By Regina Nuzzo
Los Angeles Times — Health Section
December 25, 2006

Cincinnati’s Tender Hearts at Home Senior Care provides care for your aging loved ones. Please call us when your loved one needs help 513-234-0805. 24/7

Many long-distance caregivers act as information coordinators, helping aging parents understand the confusing maze of home health aides, insurance benefits, and durable medical equipment.

Caregiving is often a long-term task. What may start out as an occasional social phone call to share family news can eventually turn into regular phone calls about managing health insurance claims, getting medical information, and arranging for respite services. What begins as a monthly trip to check on Mom or dad may turn into a larger project to move her to a nursing facility close to your home.

If you are a long-distance caregiver, you are not alone. Approximately 7 million adults are long-distance caregivers, mostly caring for aging parents who live an hour or more away. Historically, caregivers have been primarily mid-life, working women who have other family responsibilities. That’s changing. More and more men are becoming caregivers. In fact, men now represent over 40 percent of caregivers. Clearly, anyone, anywhere can be a long-distance caregiver. Gender, income, age, social status, employment—none of these prevent you from taking on caregiving responsibilities.

Cincinnati’s Tender Hearts at Home Senior Care provides care for your aging loved ones. Please call us when your loved one needs help 513-234-0805. 24/7

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask

Nobody likes to look clueless, and it’s human nature to be reluctant to ask questions. Now is the time to go against that nature. The medical community, specifically your physician, or the physician of your patient should be your first avenue for help. Be as involved as possible in their care That includes doctor visits, hospital visits, and any therapy or coping sessions the Alzheimers afflicted individual attends. Seek out other sources of information as well. Support groups, medical journals, newsletters are all good places to start. While a good doctor can be a fountain of information and support, they are probably very busy, and you are likely one of hundreds they see every week. You need to educate yourself as much as possible.

Lean On Me

While arming yourself with as much Alzheimers information as possible is a great strategy, don’t try to be Superman. Having a plethora of information is of no help, if your too exhausted to put it to good use. Medical professionals in the community should be able to point you towards organizations and support groups for caregivers. Potentially even specific to caregivers of Alzheimers patients, depending on the size of the community in which you live. These groups may even be able to provide temporary support for your Alzheimers patient while you attend to personal matters.

Your Already Doing The Right Thing

Suggesting you should look online for Alzheimers information and support may seem kind of redundant, since your likely already reading this article online. But, there may be other online resources your not aware of for help. Messaging and chat rooms are great places to go, if your looking for immediate interaction and feedback from like minded caregivers. Discussion boards while not quite as real-time-interactive, can be better, because they maintain their discussions forever. Chat room discussions tend to just disappear.

Choosing to care for someone with Alzheimers can be one of the most generous gifts a person can give. Be sure you prepare yourself with the information and support you need to set yourself up for success. It will benefit not only you, but your patient as well.

By Chris Campbell at Senior Daily Living

An effort by several state and national agencies to make Medicaid benefits easier to apply to long-term, in-home care could come to fruition Feb. 2 when Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland releases his two-year budget plan.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – After back-to-back hospital visits for congestive heart failure, Eva Olweean figured her health was back to normal. But the nurses at her retirement home knew better: Motion sensors in the 86-year-old’s bed detected too many restless nights.

Tiny sensors hover unobtrusively over the toilet, shower and doorways to detect Olweean’s movements inside her apartment. Pneumatic tubes tucked in the mattress and beneath her easy chair measure weight shifts. Caregivers and researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia study the data, noting changes in behavior that could signal medical problems.

Recognizing the coming “silver tsunami” of graying baby boomers, tech companies are racing to help aging Americans spend more time living independently instead of in nursing homes. For the first time earlier this month, the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas featured a special section devoted to high-tech senior living.

Among the advances at the show were motion sensors, the kind that allowed Olweean’s nurses to figure out what was keeping her up at night. She was experiencing excessive bloating, a common symptom of congestive heart failure. So Olweean’s cardiologist prescribed diuretics and made other adjustments to her medication that helped the woman again sleep soundly.
“We try to identify when those small problems occur, so we can fix them before they become big problems,” said Marjorie Skubic, an electrical and computer engineering professor who works with Sinclair School of Nursing researchers on the aging-in-place project.

At Oatfield Estates in the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, Ore., resident movements in the private retirement home are tracked by what employees call “bed bugs.” Those are embedded motion sensors that detect when someone’s behavior could trigger a medical alert.

Sensors like those, “smart carpets” and other tracking devices will be the norm in both private homes and group settings within the next decade, said Jason Hess, chief executive officer of Elite Care, the Portland company that owns Oatfield Estates. He said that will especially be true as insurers start embracing the cost-saving devices. “You will see a lot more places implementing these,” he said. “It comes down to cost, and out-of-the-box thinking.”

At the Las Vegas show, on display were talking pill boxes that remind seniors to take their medicine at regular intervals, and which can notify out-of-town caregivers if that doesn’t happen. There were robotic companion pets that mimic the real thing for lonely seniors in need of a psychological boost.

“We’re talking about an important paradigm shift in how we think about aging,” said Majd Alwan, director of the Washington-based Center for Aging Services Technologies. Alwan led a panel discussion on smart-home technology at the Las Vegas event.

Delaying institutionalization by a year or more, is a significant financial savings, he added. “Let alone the benefits in quality of life for the senior and for the caregiver.”
Alwan previously led the eldercare technology unit of the University of Virginia’s Medical Automation Research Center, which developed the passive sensor technology used in Missouri.

Unlike medical warning badges worn by seniors, the motion sensors’ success doesn’t depend on the cooperation of patients. Elderly people can be prone to forget the badges when dressing, or who might resist the devices as too obtrusive, said University of Missouri nursing professor Marilyn Rantz.
“Our intent with this project was to incorporate (it) into their daily lives — and make it invisible to their daily lives,” she said.

Olweean, a retired factory worker, said she barely notices the sensors.
“I don’t even know they’re here half the time,” she said.

Fifteen of the 35 residents at her apartment complex take part in the motion sensor research project. The complex is named Tiger Place after the University of Missouri mascot and is owned by the university, though managed by a private company.

Researchers there are also fine-tuning a more advanced monitoring system using virtual-reality silhouette images to allow observation of posture, gait and other movements. The silhouettes are considered a preferred alternative to more invasive video cameras.

Rantz, Alwan and other experts acknowledge that rapid technological advances in elder care must be balanced with privacy protections. That dilemma concerns Fredda Vladeck, executive director of the United Hospital Fund’s Aging in Place Initiative.

“Technology does have a role to play,” she said. “It’s a tool, not the answer.”
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