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Preparing for Advanced Stages Alzheimers Disease

By ARA Content | Feb 16, 2009 | Alzheimer's Disease, Seniors | 0 |

A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease can be devastating to a patient, family and friends. While there isn’t a cure for this frightening disease, a patient can live an average of eight years after diagnosis — some as long as 20 years. Knowing who to contact about financial, legal guardianship and will and estate planning can help reduce the fears and anxiety that go along with determining what to do next. Financial Planning According to Alzheimer’s care experts at Beverly Healthcare, Alzheimer’s patients who are concerned about how they’ll pay for the care they will need in the later stages...

Choosing Alzheimers Care for Your Loved One

By ARA Content | Feb 16, 2009 | Alzheimer's Disease, Seniors | 0 |

Many people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s live safely at home, even though they may need plenty of memory cues like lists and notes. Over time, though, Alzheimer’s causes memory loss and thinking problems that could make living at home dangerous. For example, Alzheimer’s patients who are in the mid- to late-stages of the disease have been known to leave appliances such as the stove or the coffee pot on, and wander to unsafe places such as a busy intersection or unfamiliar part of town. When this happens, Alzheimer’s experts at Beverly Healthcare, a leading provider of eldercare...

Elderly Drivers: Stop or Go?

By ARA Content | Feb 16, 2009 | Seniors | 0 |

Without so much as a tap on the brakes, my aunt whizzed through another stop sign. “What are you doing?” I shrieked. “That was a stop sign.” “Oh,” she replied rather offhandedly, “they just put those there so you’ll look before you go into an intersection.” That was the day I stopped riding with my aunt but not the day she stopped driving. From then on, I had visions of an enormous pink Chevy leading a parade of cascading accidents. And I wasn’t far from wrong. She drove with what she knew to be the utmost caution. . . .never exceeding 30 miles per hour, even on I35! She expected, even demanded that traffic would give way to her like the seas parted for Moses. Sometimes, it did. But mostly, driving with her was a harrowing experience with no end in sight. So, when do the elderly become a menace on the roads? And, what can you do when they refuse to give up the keys? Here are a few suggestions I’ve found. Causes for Concern Poor Vision – Cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration can reduce visual acuity and limit visual fields, so a yearly eye exam is imperative for the elderly driver. Ask the doctor about driving, and don’t take the word of the elderly driver on the results of her exam. Poor Hearing – Something as simple...

AMA Foundation Battles the Effects of Violence

By ARA Content | Feb 16, 2009 | Children, Living With Mental Illness, Violence | 0 |

Fund For Better Health helps provide crisis intervention for children It’s 6 a.m. and Lori Florin is addressing the Akron Police Department of Ohio during their daily roll call. She’s informing the entire force of a new — and much needed — community resource called children Who Witness Violence. “Eighty percent of the domestic violence disturbance calls in Akron in 2000 had children present,” notes Florin. “Witnessing violence can cause any number of short- and long-term effects on kids — both emotionally and physically — from clinical depression and violent behavior, to declining grades in school.” Children Who Witness...

The Mind-Body Benefits of Physical Fitness

By ARA Content | Feb 16, 2009 | Healthy Living, Stress | 0 |

Exercise can help combat stress and potential illness stress from traffic, cell phones and balancing work/life is so pervasive today that it has become a driving force behind rising health care costs. In a six-year study of more than 46,000 workers, depression and unmanaged stress emerged as the costliest risk factors in terms of medical expenditures. And, according to the American Institute of Stress, 75 to 90 percent of all doctor visits are stress-related. When someone is under stress, adrenaline pours into the blood stream as part of our “fight or flight” response and muscles throughout the body tense...

Author: ARA Content