As August comes to a close, I wanted to share one more article about the importance of eye care for Cataract Awareness Month. Vision is something we should not take for granted!  If you or a loved one need care and assistance for someone who is losing their vision in the Venice FL area, please visit www.floridahomecare.net.

Eye Care Advice for Aging Eyes
 
(ARA) – Growing older and getting reading glasses seem to go hand in hand, just like getting gray hair or wrinkles as you age. But that doesn’t have to be the case if you take steps to care for your eyes as you age.

Presbyopia, a natural effect of aging, happens to just about everyone around the age of 40, even if you have had laser eye surgery. As you age, the lens in each of your eyes begins to lose its ability to change focus quickly on an object or page of text, causing blurred vision at reading distance. Chances are that you know several people who have this condition, and you may develop it yourself, now or in the future.

Some simple, yet often overlooked steps can help you take care of your eyesight as you age:

• During prolonged intervals in front of a TV, computer or other electronic device, try blinking more often than you might normally. Every so often, look away from the device and focus on a distant object.
• Be sure to have adequate light while reading; a simple lamp may not do the trick, causing you to strain your eyes.
• Maintain a healthy diet. Contrary to popular belief, carrots are not the best vegetable for your eyes: spinach and other dark, leafy greens contain high amounts of lutein and zeaxanthin, beneficial antioxidants for vision.
• Visit your eye care professional regularly.

Beyond a healthy lifestyle, there are solutions to common age-related vision problems. With presbyopia, bifocals or reading glasses (for contact lens wearers) are a common solution. However, reading glasses can be cumbersome and easily misplaced, and bifocals require you to use a magnification lens intended for reading anytime you look down, which can make mundane tasks as simple as walking down stairs unnecessarily difficult.

Bausch + Lomb’s Multi-Focal contact lenses are designed with All-Distance Optics, a technology that delivers sharp, clear vision wherever you choose to focus. By using a gradual power shift across the entire lens, your eyes effortlessly adjust from up-close reading to mid-range computer work to distance vision while driving. There’s no need to reach for glasses to accommodate a quick change in distance.

Multi-Focal contact lenses mean you don’t have to sacrifice convenience for clear, crisp vision. Ask your eye care professional about how Multi-Focal contact lenses can help you say goodbye to your readers today, or log on to www.goodbyereaders.com to learn more.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Once again, if you need help with the care of a loved one in the Venice FL area, visit www.floridahomecare.net.

Employer Support for Care Giving Employees

“There are only four kinds of people in this world. Those who have been caregivers, those who are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.” Rosalynn Carter, Former First Lady

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that in the year 2010, 54% of workforce employees will provide
eldercare for a parent or parents and that nearly two-thirds of caregivers will experience conflict between demands at home and demands from employers.

Today’s employed Baby Boomers are the caregiver generation for their parents. They are finding themselves juggling care responsibilities around their employment obligations. Sometimes employees find they have no option but to take leave from work or use sick time to meet their caregiving demands.

Employers also feel the toll it is taking on their employees. A report by the AARP describes the cost to employers:

“Companies are also seeing the emotional and physical toll that caregiving takes on their workers. In one study, 75% of employees caring for adults reported negative health consequences, including depression, stress, panic attacks, headaches, loss of energy and sleep, weight loss, and physical pain.

Businesses suffer, too, by having to pay high health insurance costs and in lost productivity. That doesn’t count the promotions or assignments workers turn down that require travel or relocation away from aging relatives."

Businesses that don’t offer benefits or address eldercare wind up paying for them. A recent study by the MetLife Market Mature Institute and the National Alliance for Caregiving states that U.S. companies pay between $17.1 billion and $33.6 billion annually, depending on the level of caregiving involved, on lost productivity. That equals $2,110 for every full-time worker who cares for an adult.

The AARP states eldercare cost businesses:

• $6.6 billion to replace employees (9% left work either to take early retirement or quit)
• Nearly $7 billion in workday interruptions (coming in late, leaving early, taking time off during the day, or spending work time on eldercare matters)
• $4.3 billion in absenteeism

Typically, human resource departments work with employees on many issues that may affect their work productivity.  There are programs for drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, illness, absenteeism and child care; but, help with eldercare issues is not normally provided.

The AARP report follows several companies who are providing help with eldercare issues and what they are doing for their employees.

Freddie Mac has a free eldercare consultant and access to subsidized aides for a relative up to 20 days.

Verizon Wireless offers seminars on eldercare issues and allows full-time workers 80 hours a year in back-up care, 40 hours for part-time, and $4/hour for in-home help.

At the Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird LLP, workers can donate vacation time to colleagues who have used up theirs to care for family members.

A growing number of companies nationwide are directing their HR departments to provide resources, education and group help for caregiving issues by:

• Providing materials from community resources such as phone numbers to their local Senior Centers or Area Agencies on Aging.
• Making available brochures and booklets on specific programs and services by eldercare experts
• Providing speakers to educate employees on caregiving options
• Allowing options to use paid sick leave, employee job sharing and flexible hours
• Allowing employee caregivers to use business computers for caregiving research
• Contracting with companies who provide eldercare services to help employees

Eldercare service providers are also reaching out to help employee caregivers by providing informational presentations at the work place during lunch time or other times set up by employers. One such presentation provided information on reverse mortgages. Jason, who had been trying to help his parents pay for home care, learned at a work site presentation that a reverse mortgage was one way to cover caregiver expenses.

The HR Department of a local business in Utah, invited the Salt Lake Eldercare Planning Council to present a “Brown bag, Lunch and Learn” during their employees’ lunch hour. In 30 minutes time, those who attended learned how the services of a Care Manger, Home Care Provider, Elder Attorney, Medicaid Planner and Financial Consultant can help with caregiving decisions. Problems were discussed, questions answered and employees left armed with information and the names of professional people they knew could help them.

“This was the most productive lunch I have ever attended”, related Mary, one of the attendees.
“I had been very hesitant to contact an attorney to discuss my parents’ estate, because of the cost involved.  The attorney at our ‘lunch and learn’ answered my few basic questions which will allow me to prepare what I need before I meet with him to finalize my parents’ estate planning.”

Besides workplace help for employers and employees dealing with caregiving, the internet is also a great research tool.

The National Care Planning Council website at http://www.longtermcarelink.net is a comprehensive resource for eldercare, senior care and long term care planning.  It contains hundreds of articles on all aspects of eldercare.

Professional providers list their services on the NCPC website.  Each of their listings provides unique information on specific eldercare services and how to obtain help.

Employers, employees and eldercare service providers working together can make parent or senior caregiving a workable solution for all.

Source: AARP
 

If you need help caring for a loved one in the North Port FL area, please visit us at  www.floridahomecare.net.

Finding a New Focus

Advances in lenses help address two vision problems at one time

Getting cataracts? Need reading glasses too?

Several new options for artificial lenses can both eliminate cataracts and correct vision problems so you may not need glasses ever again.

The same crystalline lens in the eye creates both presbyopia and cataracts. In healthy, young eyes, the lens, which sits behind the iris, adjusts automatically for near, intermediate and long-range vision. But over time it becomes harder and less able to focus on objects close up, a condition called presbyopia, which most people notice around age 40, when they need help to read. Eventually, the lens can become cloudy and opaque as a cataract forms. By age 65, about half of all Americans have some lens clouding, and by age 75 as many as 70% of Americans have significantly impaired vision due to cataracts.

Read more from the Wall Street Journal  here…

For information about in-home care and assistance for your loved one in the Engelwood FL area, visit  www.floridahomecare.net.

Healthy Diet Could Cut Alzheimer’s Disease Risk

Eating a diet high in vegetables, fish, fruit, nuts and poultry, and low in red meat and butter may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, new research finds.

Researchers asked more than 2,100 New York City residents aged 65 and older about their dietary habits. Over the course of about four years, 253 developed Alzheimer’s disease.

Those whose diets included the most salad dressing, nuts, fish, tomatoes, poultry, cruciferous vegetables (such as cauliflower and broccoli), dark and green leafy vegetables, and the least red meat, high-fat dairy, organ meat and butter had a 38 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those whose diets included fewer fruits, vegetables and poultry and more red meat and high-fat dairy.

"Following this dietary pattern seems to protect from Alzheimer’s disease," said senior study author Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. But he added that "this is an observational study, not a clinical trial," meaning that researchers cannot say with certainty that eating a certain way helps prevent the disease.

….Read more

For information about care and assistance for a loved one suffering from Alzheimer’s in the Venice FL area, please visit www.floridahomecare.net.

Two Parents With Dementia: How Do Caregivers Cope?
Carol Bradley Bursack

My mom and dad both have dementia. I am all alone taking care of them since my sister passed away I have no one to help me. I get sad and frustrated with them both. How do I deal with my feelings?

These are powerful words from one Agingcare.com forum participant. It’s a “cry from the wild” which will touch the heart of most caregivers. Many of us feel alone when we are trying to care for our aging parents and there are no siblings to help, or if there are siblings, they can’t or won’t help. When we have one parent who has dementia, it is hard. When we have two, it is often nearly unbearable.

My dad had dementia from surgery. Mom developed a more subtle type of dementia, the type they used to call “senile dementia.” Now it’s called “organic brain disease.” Whatever the type – Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, Pick’s disease, dementia due to Parkinson’s or just plain “organic brain disease,” which sort of applies to them all – it’s painful for the caregiver. Sometimes the pain is so raw and isolating that the caregivers become more ill than those they are caring for.

Statistics vary, but upward of thirty percent of caregivers die before those they are caring for. Some of those are adult children, lonely and depressed, isolated and frustrated, often torn by guilt. These caregivers can develop cancer, commit suicide, or have heart problems and other ill health that can likely be traced to the stress of caring for their loved ones.

Read more here..

If you need help with the care of your loved one in the Port Charlotte area, visit www.floridahomecare.net.