The theme for March 2011 is "Eat Right with Color."

National Nutrition Month® is a nutrition education and information campaign created annually in March by the American Dietetic Association. The campaign focuses attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits.

The newly released 2011 Dietary Guidelines for Americans offer a practical roadmap to help you make changes in your eating plan to improve your health.

The Dietary Guidelines encourage Americans to eat more:

• Whole grains: Increase whole grains by choosing whole grain breads and cereals, brown rice and whole wheat pasta. Make at least half your grain servings whole grains.
• Vegetables: Eat a variety of vegetables, especially dark-green, red and orange vegetables plus beans and peas. Most adults need 2 ½ cups of vegetables per day.
• Fruits: Add fruit to meals and snacks—fresh, frozen or canned—to get about 2 cups each day.
• Low-fat or fat free milk, yogurt and cheese or fortified soy beverages: Include 3 cups
  per day for calcium, vitamin D, protein and potassium. Lactose-free milk is also an option.
• Vegetable oils such as canola, corn, olive, peanut and soybean: These are high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Use in moderate amounts in place of solid fats. 
• Seafood – Include a variety of seafood more often in place of some meat and poultry.

Source www.eatright.org

This March, show your support of National Nutrition Month and consider hiring a professional caregiver for your loved one. By doing so, you will ensure that your loved ones are receiving the best possible care that caters to their special needs. All caregivers provide customized care for each patient to see that they receive the best care possible. Healthy eating is important for all people, and proper nutrition becomes even more important as we age.

If you or someone you know needs help with home care in Orlando FL and the surrounding area, contact the caregivers at Age Advantage. We provide quality and affordable in home care for many disabled and elderly loved ones in our community. Call us at 407-347-2050 for more information.

The need to provide care for another person arises for many reasons. Often, the person who needs care does not realize it and family members must step in to help make decisions. One of those decisions involves who the caregiver will be and where care will be provided. The choices can be difficult unless you know what to consider.

When one member of the family becomes disabled, roles within the family often change. A person who took care of the family in the past or was the income provider may become dependent, while another person in the family takes on added, often unfamiliar responsibilities. For a single person, the changes may involve a new dependence on non-family members. Just the word “dependence” can cause unpleasant feelings. Being
able to talk openly about fears, anxiety, frustration, and doubts can be very helpful in dealing well with these new facts of life.

Discuss chronic care needs with the person’s medical team to learn what treatments; adjustments and other changes may be necessary. For some people, training to provide medical treatments, advice on coping with the challenges of chronic illness, and some long-range financial planning will be enough. For others, in-home personal assistance is the best option. Sometimes a nursing home or assisted living center is the better choice for everyone involved.

In making the decision for home care, it is important to be realistic about what the person in your care needs, and what you, the caregiver, can provide in terms of time, kinds of care, and financial responsibility. For example, deciding to hire an in-home attendant may be necessary if the primary caregiver works full time.

Before this happens, it’s important to look at the financial and emotional issues that go along with this decision.

Source: Caring.com
Continue reading…

If you or someone you know needs help with home care in Orlando FL and the surrounding area, contact the caregivers at Age Advantage. We provide quality and affordable in home care for many disabled and elderly loved ones in our community. Call us at 407-347-2050 for more information.

(HealthDay News) — When medical experts talk about prevalence, they’re usually referring to how common a particular disease might be. But in the case of cataracts, they might just as well be talking about how common it is to uncover misinformation and misunderstanding about the condition.

Cataracts are a leading cause of blindness among seniors in the United States, with more than half of all U.S. residents developing the cloudy vision of cataracts by the time they reach 80 years old, according to Prevent Blindness America, a nonprofit group that focuses on eye health. But eye experts say that people seem to believe things about cataracts that aren’t quite right, including when and how they should be treated.

Misinformation often seems to develop innocently enough, with well-meaning folks spreading things they’ve learned by word-of-mouth. “Sometimes friends give confusing and conflicting information because not every patient is the same or because they’ve heard something from someone else,” said Dr. Cynthia Bradford, an ophthalmology professor at the University of Oklahoma’s Dean A. McGee Eye Institute.

Nonetheless, the misinformation sometimes leads people to delay treatment long past when it could help them or to expect too much from treatment for this widespread vision problem. Cataracts occur when the lens of an eye grows cloudy, according to the U.S. National Eye Institute. Vision might grow progressively cloudy until the person has difficulty seeing, or the person’s vision might take on a brownish tint that makes it harder to distinguish colors. And that leads to one of the first major myths — that cataracts are something that grow on top of the eye.

“A lot of people think of it as a growth, but it’s almost like honey that’s become granulated,” Bradford said. The lens itself is the problem, which is why cataract surgery requires that the lens be removed and replaced.

Source: Caring.com…continue reading

If you or someone you know needs help with home care in Orlando FL and the surrounding area, contact the caregivers at Age Advantage. We provide quality and affordable in home care for many disabled and elderly loved ones in our community. Call us at 407-347-2050 for more information.

People celebrating their 65th birthday today were born 9 months after Victory in Europe Day. Their arrival marked what some consider the very beginning of the Baby Boom Generation, which (at least in the Western World) enjoyed economic abundance, rock and roll, and long life expectancy.

Many wonder, however, whether the “Golden Years” are really going to be all that golden–not only for them, but for everyone else. Experts warn that many “Baby Boomers” are alarmingly short on savings, saddled with debt, and in poor health. The questions being asked are: Who’s going to pay the bill? And how will the aging of this generation affect the social landscape?

source:  wikihow.com

Age Advantage caregivers are available to answer all of your home care questions. We are a home care agency providing live in home care in Orlando FL and the surrounding areas. Call us at 407-347-2050.

The basic definition of a cataract is where there is a clouding of the lens of the eye. When this takes place the light that normally enters the eye is changed or blocked off. Behind the colored iris and pupil lies the actual lens of the human eye. This lens is basically transparent and helps to focus images viewed onto what is called the retina of the eye. The retina is the part of the eye which sends the images that people see straight to their brain to be decoded. The most basic cause of eye loss stemming from a cataract forces vision to become dim or sometimes blurry. So how often do cataracts affect ordinary people in the world? One of the top causes of blindness and poor vision amongst older adults in countries like the Unites States is a cataract. There is an estimated twenty million folks in the USA alone that are around the age of forty, and they all have a cataract. 

It has been proven that literally one half of the people in America will develop a cataract by the time they have reached eighty. There are even studies showing a cataract forming in newborn babies, and some percentage of young people. Nobody really knows the exact reasons a cataract forms, but it has been assumed that they generally come along with age. So the older a person gets the more likely they are to form a cataract. There are also a multitude of risk factors that can cause a cataract. These include diseases like diabetes, extremely hot temperatures, long periods of exposure to the suns UV rays, inflammation of the eye, genetic factors, prolonged use of steroids, diseases that form in the eye, injuries to the eye, and smoking all play a role in the risk of a cataract forming. 

So what are the general symptoms associated with a cataract? It is well known that cataracts cannot cause conditions such as tears, pain, or redness, yet there are a few warning signs a person can use to judge if there is a possibility they have a cataract. These are things like feeling as if there is some sort of film cover, or ghost images and blurry vision. Also if there is a startling feeling that spawns from being exposed to very strong light. Also if the person often has a hard time seeing close-range objects. Sometimes it is even possible to physically spot a cataract, and they will normally have a sort of milky look to them and resemble a yellowish spot in the pupil. So what are some of the treatments that are available for older adults with poor vision? 

It is actually a common fact that most eye problems can be cured if they are treated as soon as they are discovered. Just like with any other disease if it is discovered early there is a much better chance of curing it, and avoid longer-term damages. The most important factor when it comes to safeguarding a person’s vision is taking part in eye exams regularly. Any person who is 65 and older should have a full eye exam completed at least one time every 1 to 2 years. This should be done even if there are no apparent eye conditions at the time. One more step to maintaining healthy vision is to ask the eye doctor for what is known as a dilated exam of the eye, and this just adds an extra level of safety against these sorts of conditions.

The caregivers at Age Advantage are available to talk with you and your family about all of your live-in home care needs. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing quality, affordable home care in Orlando FL and the surrounding areas. Call 407-347-2050 for more information.

“How many times has your mother refused to change her clothes? Has your father resisted getting out of bed? Has your wife pushed you away when you tried to brush her teeth? Many times a caregiver will be particularly frustrated by her loved one’s refusal to help himself. At times she can’t help but think that the person she cares for "36 hours a day" is going out of his way to make her miserable! The increasing irrationality of individuals with dementia makes it even harder on the caregiver.”

When your loved one resists care, step back calmly and think:

• Are there any environmental factors such as lighting, shadows, noise, commotion or other external influences that are causing the problem now?
• Before you say something, think about what you are going to say. Check your emotions and frustration before you speak. Your increased frustration can contribute to your loved one’s agitation.
• Put yourself in her shoes. Use your knowledge of her personal background to pinpoint patterns and reasons for her reaction.
• Is this confrontation worth escalating? Choose your battles wisely. A head-to-toe bath is not necessary every day or even more than once each week. Similarly, clothes do not have to be changed every day if they are not soiled.

Continue reading from ec-online.net 

The caregivers at Age Advantage understand caregiver stress are available to talk with you and your family about all of your live-in home care needs and concerns. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing caring quality and affordable home care in Orlando FL and the surrounding areas. Call
407-347-2050 for more information.

By Isabel Fawcett, SPHR for LTC Expert Publications

If it seems like caregiving to aging parents with chronic health issues brings out the worst in some individuals, it happens. The family’s communication gridlock may not be due to the stress of eldercare, however.

Deep-seated individual and/or family dysfunction in communicating and relationships may have remained unresolved over the years. Unresolved family issues will not magically disappear.

Family Dynamics Mirrors Social Issues
In 2010, healthcare reform legislation passed in the form of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA.) Some Americans were gung-ho about the passage of PPACA and the need to radically reform healthcare in the U.S. Other Americans were and may remain vehemently opposed to PPACA. Some individuals are in favor of having PPACA repealed. One nation America shall remain regardless of individual viewpoints.

Consider family dynamics in context of the PPACA social analogy. One family remains recurring dysfunction notwithstanding. To have and express strong emotions is to be human.

Tip of the Family’s Eldercare Iceberg
Common sticking points for families facing eldercare life transitions include:

• estate disagreements;
• eldercare decision disagreements;
• financial disputes;
• medical treatment issues for elders;
• funeral, burial and memorial decisions;
• wills and powers of attorney, and more

Even the most trivial matters can trigger major family disputes or lead to a total breakdown in a family’s communication and relationships.

Feelings
Feelings will ebb and flow at-will. Some feelings may be repressed and surprise us in when, and, how they re-emerge during the most stressful times in our lives. Stressful times – as in caring for our aging and chronically ill parents who once did a dismal or, not so dismal job of caring for us when we were children.

Remember those occasional (normal) vulnerable feelings you and I had as children?

Some of our childhood feelings were real. Other feelings we may have experienced in childhood may have been based on imagined or misinterpreted signals. Those childhood and young adulthood feelings that we may not have been able to express due to: age, immaturity, language development, cultural influences, fear, or any number of reasons, remain intact only to re-surface when least expected.

It may be that the most important step a caregiver can take when eldercare makes its debut in a family’s life is recognizing that disputes will occur in the best of families, as in society. Similar to social disputes and heated public discourse family disputes boil over or slow-simmer.

A caregiver’s handling of family disagreements may ease angst and help the caregiver, elder, and the entire family achieve healing over time. Some caregivers do so without outside help. Others may need a friend, counselor, mentor, or licensed professional to help. It’s all good.

The caregivers at Age Advantage can help answer all of your home care questions. Contact us at 407-347-2050. We are a home care agency providing elder care in Orlando FL and surrounding areas.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The signs can hit you quickly or sneak up on you gradually. But what do you do if Mom or Dad isn’t safe living alone anymore?

“The worst thing you can do is ignore it,” said Bob Mecca, principal of Robert A. Mecca & Associates, an independent, fee-only financial planning firm in Hoffman Estates, Ill.

If an elderly relative starts to need help to get through the day, families who want to avoid institutions often face two choices: hire a home-care aide or become one yourself. Both these options allow the older person to remain at home where he or she may be most comfortable, experts say, but each has its own pitfalls.

Families who choose outside help must decide what level of care their loved one requires and whether they want to go through an agency or hire a caregiver privately. And people who join the ranks of the 65 million unpaid family caregivers in the U.S. can face health-draining burnout if they don’t budget for respite care for themselves.

There are two main kinds of in-home care. Personal or home-care aides provide companionship and support a person’s activities of daily living such as dressing, bathing, preparing meals and doing laundry. Home health aides may do all those things plus tasks such as administering medication or recording changes in a client’s condition. They also may work under a nurse’s supervision.

…continue reading from marketwatch.com

Home care counselors at Age Advantage are available to talk with you and your family about care needs for your loved one, including, how to reduce caregiver stress while providing better, affordable care. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing In Home Care in Orlando FL and surrounding areas.

The need to provide care for another person arises for many reasons. Often, the person who needs care does not realize it and family members must step in to help make decisions. One of those decisions involves who the caregiver will be and where care will be provided. The choices can be difficult unless you know what to consider.

When one member of the family becomes disabled, roles within the family often change. A person who took care of the family in the past or was the income provider may become dependent, while another person in the family takes on added, often unfamiliar responsibilities. For a single person, the changes may involve a new dependence on non-family members. Just the word “dependence” can cause unpleasant feelings. Being
able to talk openly about fears, anxiety, frustration, and doubts can be very helpful in dealing well with these new facts of life.

Discuss chronic care needs with the person’s medical team to learn what treatments; adjustments and other changes may be necessary. For some people, training to provide medical treatments, advice on coping with the challenges of chronic illness, and some long-range financial planning will be enough. For others, in-home personal assistance is the best option. Sometimes a nursing home or assisted living center is the better choice for everyone involved.

In making the decision for home care, it is important to be realistic about what the person in your care needs, and what you, the caregiver, can provide in terms of time, kinds of care, and financial responsibility. For example, deciding to hire an in-home attendant may be necessary if the primary caregiver works full time.

Before this happens, it’s important to look at the financial and emotional issues that go along with this decision.

Source: Caring.com
Continue reading…

For information about how Age Advantage can help your family with home care, please contact our caregivers at 407-347-2050. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing quality in home care in Orlando FL and surrounding areas.

“Wishing you and yours all the Best in 2011
May you enjoy health and prosperity
throughout the New Year!”

From All of Us at Age Advantage Home Care Services

At Age Advantage, our caring staff can help answer all of your questions about home care, including how to reduce caregiver stress while providing tender, quality care to your loved one. Age Advantage is a home care agency providing caregivers and in home care in Orlando and surrounding areas.