Caregiver

By Micha Shalev About 5 million Americans, or 10 percent of those over 65 years of age, suffer from Alzheimer’s disease according to the Fischer...

An American over age 60 today has a 44 percent lower chance of developing dementia than a similar-aged person did roughly 30 years ago, the longest study of these trends in the U.S. concluded.

Both family and paid caregivers may overlook various barriers to effective communication with impaired older adults and consequently misinterpret verbal and behavioral messages.

By Jim Fitzgerald
 CHESTNUT RIDGE, N.Y. — At the Fellowship Community’s adult home, workers are paid not according to what they do, but what they need....

What does Massachusetts have against spouses? Judging by reactions on Beacon Hill, this is not a “spouse-friendly” state. I have been on a campaign for years now, urging state lawmakers to add spouses to the list of family members who can be paid caregivers. Under Medicaid rules, a person who wants to hire her aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, son, daughter, grandmother or grandfather---can pay them for personal care services at home. But not their husband or their wife.

Here’s why it’s an issue: Many people have brain plaques, suggesting they might be developing Alzheimer’s even if they don’t have any symptoms.

Welcome to the virtual house call. It’s increasingly getting attention in the United States as a way to conveniently diagnose simple maladies, such as whether that runny nose and cough is a cold or the flu.

The old-fashioned house call is starting to make a comeback as part of an effort to improve care for some of Medicare’s most frail and expensive patients.

When it came time to live closer to his in-laws, Siegle had trouble finding something that he could adapt or expand to fit his needs. Instead, he found a suitable subdivision close to Traverse City, designed a house, had it built and moved in last summer.

When life’s challenges include memory loss or dementia, your perceptions, relationships, and priorities inevitably shift. Changes to our sleep patterns naturally occur with aging, but scientists are finding links between changes to sleep and senior memory impairment, cognitive decline, and even dementia. When we get older, we begin to forget things. That’s the common wisdom, anyway, and it’s not far from the truth. It’s long been known that sleep plays a strong role in memory consolidation, but now, research is showing that age-related changes to the sleeping brain disrupt the normal pathways to memory formation, leading to that forgetfulness we associate with growing older.