FREE webinar on May 1st at 2pm Eastern time - Caregiver Burnout and your health

Please join us for a free webinar on May 1st at 2pm Eastern time. Toronto -York region 905-597-5825  

Caregiving by the numbers: 66% are women; family caregivers provide 20 hours of unpaid in-home care; caring for an Alzheimer's patient can shorten a person's life by 4 to 8 years. 46% of caregivers have clinical depression.

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Join Us for a FREE Webinar

Tuesday, May 1st at 11am PST / 2pm EST

Register Now

Webinar will cover Caregiver Burnout and how to protect your health, presented by Dr. Hoblyn.

The webinar will be presented by Dr. Hoblyn, chief medical officer of eTherapi.com, which offers access to professional psychotherapy via online video conferencing for adults seeking to improve their emotional and mental wellbeing. Dr. Hoblyn is a psychiatrist with expertise in treating adults with mental health conditions. She currently oversees the Inpatient Mental Health Services at the Palo Alto VA and is on Faculty as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Dr. Hoblyn also has a background in public health and is very committed to improving global access to mental health services for all. She has practiced in the US and Europe and has a comprehensive understanding of healthcare service delivery models. She has degrees from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, University College Dublin Ireland and the University of California at Berkeley. She has authored and co-authored over 30 papers, books and book chapters in the field and is an investigator on several funded research studies examining mental health outcomes and cognitive functioning.

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Caregiver Burnout and How to Protect Your Health

There are currently 75 million adults in North America alone who are caring for an elderly, chronically ill or disabled family member and the vast majority are also raising children and holding down full-time jobs. Many of these family caregivers report symptoms of depression, high levels of stress and general feeling of being overburdened—Does this sound like you or someone that you know?

If you are part of the “sandwich generation”, defined as a generation of people who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children and juggling other life responsibilities, the pressure to “do it all” places you at risk for physical and mental health detriments. Many family caregivers report that they feel alone and unsure of what resources are available to them and what steps they can take to decrease their stress levels. Knowing the signs of caregiver burnout and becoming knowledgeable about the steps to prevent caregiver burnout are paramount in ensuring your own health so that you can better care for the health and wellness of your loved one.

The Signs of Burnout

Psychologists define burnout as “a debilitating psychological condition brought about by unrelieved stress.” Because burnout is not tangible—burnout isn’t immediately, outwardly apparent in the way that sore throat or rash are, for example, family caregivers can often deny or simply be unaware of the signs of burnout. Sometimes burnout is noticed first by other family members and friends around you. Pay attention to these warning signs:

·         - Feeling pessimistic and dissatisfied

·         - Decreased energy or emotional exhaustion

·         - Withdrawing from friends or social interactions

·         - Loss of interest in work or enjoyable activities

·         - Increased use of alcohol or medication to relax

·         - Becoming impatient, irritable, or argumentative

·         - Lowered resistance to illness

Preventing Burnout

The most important step that you can take to combat burnout is to closely monitor your stress level. A high stress level lowers resistance to disease and leads to fatigue, depression and eventually, burnout. The following strategies can help:

Find a caregiver support group.
Most communities have services or groups where you can confide in others who are also caregivers and receive emotional support. Call your local senior center, area Agency on Aging, hospital senior services, physician or church. If you can’t leave the house, search the Internet for support groups.

Set reasonable limits. 
You can’t be a successful caregiver if you give until there is nothing left. Be realistic about how much time and energy you can devote to care giving and know when you need to pull back and tend to your own needs. Prioritize tasks so that you have a manageable load of activities to plan.

Take care of your health.
You owe it to yourself to make time for your own heath. Take a walk or do some form of regular exercise at least 20 minutes, two or three times a week. Be sure to eat a variety of foods, including the 7 super foods—blueberries, dark chocolate, fish, nuts, eggs, vegetables and flax seed. Also make sure to get at least seven to eight hours of sleep per night.

Incorporate joy into your life.
Do things you enjoy on a daily basis. Listen to music, garden, cook, go see a movie, or just walk the dog. Think about activities you’ve done in the past that you found enjoyable and try to find the time to continue to partake in these activities.

Start a journal.
Writing is a great way to express emotion and regain perspective. Caregivers often feel conflicting emotions. Write down what you feel and accept the good and the bad. You might even start your own caregiving blog—this is a good medium for expression that also serves the prosocial purpose of letting other family caregivers know they are not alone.

Reach out for help.

There are a many resources for help with care-giving responsibilities. Call a friend, family member, or even a volunteer from a senior center or church and suggest specific things that they can do to help you. You can also hire a caregiver from a reputable home care agency, such as the leading provider of in-home respite care, Home Care Assistance, to provide respite care so that you can recharge.

Evaluate the impact that caregiving has on your life with this assessment.

Take Assessment Now

If you are one of the millions of family caregivers experiencing clinically significant symptoms of depression, a weakened immune system, increased stress levels or sleep deprivation, you may be experiencing "burnout".

Being an effective, yet responsible caregiver means learning how to take care of yourself first so that you can provide healthy support and compassion to others. These strategies will help you become a better caregiver and avoid the debilitating effects of burnout.

As part of our mission in changing the way the world ages, it’s important that we not only provide older adults high caliber care that enables them to live happier, healthier lives at home, but that we also advocate for the quality of life of the professional and family care providers who provide care day in and day out.

© Copyright 2012 Home Care Assistance Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Each Home Care Assistance office is independently owned and operated. | Find a Location

Aspirin not worth risks for healthy women: Study

BY FREDERIK JOELVING, REUTERS NOVEMBER 25, 2011

Aspirin is a bad bargain for healthy women trying to stave off heart attacksor strokes, although it's commonly used for that purpose, according to Dutch researchers.

In a new report, they say 50 women will need to take the medication for 10 years for just one to be helped -- and that's assuming they are at high risk to begin with.

"There are very few women who actually benefit," said Dr. Jannick Dorresteijn of University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands. "If you don't want to treat 49 patients for nothing to benefit one, you shouldn't treat anyone with aspirin."

The new study adds to a long-standing controversy over aspirin, one of the world's most widely used drugs.

Doctors agree it's worth taking for people who've already had a heart attack or a stroke, but they are less certain when it comes to so-called primary prevention.

"We all appreciate that the average treatment effect is very small, but that some patients may benefit more than others," Dorresteijn told Reuters Health.

Today, leading medical groups like the American Heart Associationrecommend aspirin for people at increased risk for heart problems.

But the Dutch findings, published in the European Heart Journal, suggest many women would still be taking the drug needlessly.

Dorresteijn and his colleagues analyzed data on nearly 28,000 healthy women age 45 and above who had received either aspirin or dummy pills in an earlier U.S. trial.

The women on aspirin generally took a low dose of 100 milligrams every other day.

Overall, aspirin cut the rate of heart attacks, strokes and death from heart disease from 2.4 per cent to 2.2 per cent.

"Nine out of 10 women experience less than a one-per cent risk reduction for cardiovascular disease in the next ten years, so that is a really small treatment effect," said Dorresteijn.

He added that aspirin comes with side effects, too. For instance, it can cause bleeding ulcers and make people more likely to bruise due to its blood-thinning effects.

And although it's cheap -- at only a few dollars per month of treatment -- putting lots of healthy people on the drug would be a big expenditure in the health care budget, Dorresteijn said.

After subtracting the serious side effects from the health gains, the Dutch team found doctors would have to be willing to treat a lot of women to get a net advantage.

"Women older than 65 years of age benefit more than average, but still for those women the benefit was so small that you would need to treat 49 for nothing to prevent one event," said Dorresteijn. "Of course it's disappointing, because you would like a medication to be effective."

Earlier this year, two large reviews of previous aspirin trials yielded similarly sobering results. One found a tiny reduction in heart attacks with aspirin and no effect on death rates or strokes. The other showed as many as 1,111 men and women would need to take aspirin daily for the duration of the trials to prevent just one death.

The government-backed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force advises that men age 45 to 79 take aspirin to stave off heart attacks, as long as the benefit outweighs the risk of bleeding.

For women age 55 to 79, aspirin is recommended to prevent strokes, with the same caveat.

Dr. Michael LeFevre of the USPSTF said he wasn't surprised by the Dutch findings, but added that it muddied the potential benefit on stroke by including heart attacks in the analysis.

The number of women who would need to be treated with aspirin to prevent a stroke depends on their baseline risk. If you are willing to treat only 50 women to see a net benefit for one -- that is, taking into account serious bleeds -- a woman's baseline 10-year stroke risk would have to be as high as 19 per cent.

"So if that is our threshold, almost no women will qualify," LeFevre said in an email, noting that treating 1,000 such women in their 60s will prevent 32 strokes and cause 12 bleeding ulcers.

"The central message of this study is really that there are an awful lot of women who are taking aspirin for prevention who should not be taking aspirin," he added in a telephone interview with Reuters Health. "I think the task force would agree with that."

Dr. Franz Messerli, who heads the high blood pressure program at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, said there are much better ways to curb stroke risk than taking aspirin.

"First and foremost," he told Reuters Health, "make sure your blood pressure is perfectly well-controlled… because blood pressure is by far the most important risk factor for stroke."

That can be achieved by changing diet and exercise habits, or by blood pressure medications like diuretics, beta-blockers or calcium channel blockers.

People may also want to rein in their cholesterol levels, Messerli added, although cholesterol-lowering drugs themselves are controversial in primary prevention.

"The question of primary prevention has not been resolved," he said. "The good news is that that there are two ongoing randomized trials that hopefully will allow us to come to firm conclusions."

SOURCE: European Heart Journal, online November 16, 2011.

© Copyright (c) Reuters

http://www.canada.com/health/seniors/Aspirin+worth+risks+healthy+women+Study/5766866/story.html

Home Care Assistance Healthy Longevity Webinar Series: Heart Health 101

Join us for our free webinar on February 17th at11am PST/2pm ET featuring renowned Cleveland Clinic heart experts and authors,Drs. Marc Gillinov and Steven Nissen.
Go to www.homecareassistance.com/heartmonth/ for details on how to register. 


Home Care Assistance provides a free webinar series that features experts in various fields discussing topics of interest dealing withaging, health and wellness and healthy longevity. In honor of Heart Month, the webinar for the month of February will feature renowned heart experts Drs. Marc Gillinov and Steven Nissen. Drs. Nissen and Gillinov are authors of the new book Heart 411-The Only Guide to Heart Health You’ll Ever Need. The book has been described as the definitive guide to heart health from two of America’s most respected doctors at Cleveland Clinic, the leading hospital for heart health in America. Their book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in heart health that provides answers to common questions such as “Can a high stress job really lead to a heart attack?” and “What are the most important medical tests to run to check on heart health?” in an accessible way andprovides useful health tips from which everyone can benefit.


For more information about cardiac rehabilitation or the post-hospitalization discharge process, please visit www.HospitaltoHomeCare.com.

www.HomeCareAssistance-toronto.com • 905-597-5825

Proper Pillow Selection for a Good Night’s Sleep

HEALTH

(NC)—A good night’s sleep can be one of the most important elements for maintaining good health and optimal functioning.

There is no one best pillow for everyone. Alberta’s chiropractors offer these tips for selecting the pillow that’s right for you:

• Choose a size of pillow suitable for your body size or frame. The pillow should cover the entire back of your neck to avoid putting pressure on your spine.

• Try out the pillow. Most pillows are packaged in a plastic wrapper so you can lay it on a display bed in the store and put your head on it. This is the best way to find out if you are on the right track.

• A hypoallergenic pillow is a must if you suffer from allergies, but it is also a good choice for anyone.

• Buckwheat filled pillows have become increasingly popular. Buckwheat is hypoallergenic, it will mold to the contours of your head and neck providing good support, but it will also change shape when you move.

If you or your family experience pain and discomfort at night or have difficulty falling asleep, visit your chiropractor. Chiropractors are trained to treat spinal problems that can interfere with a restful night’s sleep. They can also offer nutritional and lifestyle advice that can help improve sleep quality. More information, including where to find a chiropractor near you, can be found at www.albertachiro.com.

http://www.zoomermag.com/health/proper-pillow-selection-for-a-good-nights-sleep/36085#more-36085

Apparently, senior citizens (with chronic pain) are lying on beds made of gravy

Having slashed councillor expense budgets, city hall is looking for new ways to save money. One idea is to eliminate the Toronto Hardship Fund, which the city’s website describes as a way to “meet the medically based needs of residents where the cost of these items would cause undue financial hardship.” If that sounds at touch abstract, the good folk at the Toronto Star (who may or may not be headed for the chopping block themselves) did what good journalists do and followed the money—all the way to a $3,500 bed for an elderly woman, Shirley Schillinger, who suffers from chronic pain.

The city’s paper of record has the details:

Schillinger is one of about 1,300 low-income Toronto seniors and disabled people with serious medical needs who benefit from the $900,000 city fund every year. But city council voted 23-22 last month to consider axing the fund as part of its efforts to shave $360 million from next year’s budget.

More than a dozen community social service agencies are hoping city manager Joe Pennachetti spares the fund when he tables his proposed 2012 budget later this month.

“Eliminating the fund will endanger the health and wellbeing of more than a thousand Toronto residents who struggle daily with the basics,” says John Campey of Social Planning Toronto, which is leading a campaign to save the fund.

Depending on your point of view, the fund is either a good example of taxpayer dollars at work (60 cents per year for the average property taxpayer) or, you know, a big boat of gravy. Of course, since Rob Forddidn’t find the gravy at city hall that he preached about on the campaign trail, he has repeatedly redefined his favourite term to include thing like city workers and even the vehicle registration tax. In other words, he seems to be gradually defining everything that represents any sort of government intervention as a form of waste. Sure, sticking up for the Hardship Fund would be a deviation from his larger strategy, but could it really hurt Ford that much? After all, a bed for a senior citizen isn’t quite the same as a $12,000 retirement party.

• Hardship fund on the chopping block [Toronto Star]

http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/gravy-train-wreck/2011/11/10/toronto-hardship-fund/

Keep on Going

By Kevin McKay
Posted: Saturday, December 31st, 2011

The year was 1978 and 43-year-old Phil Horton came to the realization that something had to change in his life. The married father of two girls was busy working for BC Hydro, golfing every Saturday and Sunday morning, and enjoying life with his family the rest of the time. Yet, something was missing. Phil was getting larger – and not in a good way. He needed to get back in shape and he needed to do it right away.

So, what prompted the change in attitude? Part of it was passing the milepost that said 40; part of it was realizing that golf alone was not cutting it; and part of it was getting tired of dragging all that extra weight up and down mountains all over the province.

His job gave Phil the opportunity to travel the province inspecting the installation of overhead lines. It meant hiking over some very rugged terrain, which became more difficult as he aged. He made the decision to change his lifestyle. “The running and jogging boom was very big at that time and, as much as I hated running, I saw it as possibly a way to get fitter,” he says. “It was a case of being in the right place at the right time.”

For his first run, Phil decided to run around Stanley Park. It was not easy, but he did it, and started on a training regimen of running in and around the park with the help of some mentors who provided encouragement and showed him the trails. He says, “I ran both around the Seawall and through all the various trails and paths. It is a beautiful setting and is one of my favourite places to run and to train. I know that park like the back of my hand.”

Then Phil decided he would like to try running a marathon.
“I bought all the books on running and one said on the cover, ‘So you want to run a marathon.’ I followed that religiously seven days a week for three months. My first one was in Richmond around 1982, and I was hooked. I have run many half marathons and a handful of full marathons.”

One item on Phil’s bucket list was the New York marathon, something he crossed off his list in November 2010 at the age of 75. “I always wanted to run that marathon and I finally did,” he says. “You don’t just treat it as a normal race. Running in New York is like 26 miles (42 kilometres) of sightseeing. It was most exciting not only to finish but to experience the whole week - it is unique.”

Phil, who never paid any attention to the Senior Games when he was working, discovered them shortly after he retired at the age of 57 in 1992. Without work to occupy him, Phil and his wife, Mary, looked around to see what they could get involved in. They saw an advertisement for badminton at the Bonsor Recreation Centre in Burnaby. They decided to give it a try and started to play twice a week – something Phil still does to this day.
“One of the things I like the most about badminton is the camaraderie,” he says. “There were some nice people at Bonsor who helped Mary and me when we were still learning the game. It is a lot of fun. Some days, you make a few really good shots, and it feels great. People tell me I have a good serve. What I like is that I can run around, play a few games and still go out later for a run and not feel stiff the next day. I have sort of conditioned myself to different activities without the downside.”

Eventually, Phil and Mary started to compete in badminton at the Senior Games; they won several medals.
“Mary was a very good player and won several gold medals with her partner over the years until her hip went,” says Phil. “Having good health is very important for staying active and, fortunately for me, I have very good knees and joints.”

Although Phil was a successful badminton competitor and enjoyed the game, he was still restless. What he didn’t like was waiting around the gym for three days of competition, watching other matches and waiting for his next competition without any opportunity to meet other people or see any of the other activities and sports.

In the Senior Games, athletes are only allowed to compete in one activity or sport per year, so when Phil started looking around for an alternative to badminton, he quickly zeroed in on golf, a sport he’s played since age nine.

“I started playing during the time I had a little stint living with my aunt out in Haney,” he says. “The local golf course quickly became my favourite spot, and I snuck onto the course where the staff that worked there would keep kicking me off. The owner must have seen something in me because he told them to just let me play, as I might become a real player someday. At that point, I could still be a little bit of a jerk but golf, sports and the good people I met helped keep me on the straight and narrow.”

Even after he married and started a family, Phil feels he was fortunate to be able to continue playing golf every Saturday and Sunday morning that weather permitted. It was natural for him to represent Zone 4 in golf at the Games, something he did in 1999 in Kelowna and 2004 in Penticton. Aside from his time on the course, Phil enjoyed watching some of the other athletes compete.

Phil also tried out road race cycling in 2002 in Prince George and mountain biking in Nanaimo in 2007. Though he relished the challenge of cycling, he did not bring home any medals in those games, though he did have time to check out plenty of other activities at his leisure.

“The race in Prince George was just in terrible weather and a lot of my competitors take it so seriously. They had leg muscles that were huge and state of the art equipment. One guy even had a truck following him while he raced with a back-up bike in the back.”

Unfortunately, for Phil, marathon isn’t an event at the Senior Games but he did have the chance to compete in the long-distance track and field events on many occasions. The longer the race, the better he did, winning one gold and one silver in the 10 km run the three times he entered it, as well as one silver medal in the 5,000-metre race one year.
“I am not the fastest guy in the world, and I could never compete against the sprinters,” says Phil. “I just go steadily along and keep on going until the end of the race.”

http://www.seniorlivingmag.com/articles/keep-on-going

Stouffville turns out to welcome Santa