“There are only four kinds of people in the world. Those who have been caregivers. Those who are currently caregivers. Those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.” –Rosalyn Carter
These prescient words by the former first lady remain as relevant and true as ever.
According to a 2020 report from the AARP:
Your daughter accompanies you to a doctor’s appointment for moral support, and the doctor addresses all his questions to her instead of to you.
Nothing like feeling invisible!
The nurse talks to you the way Kindergarten teachers speak to their students, sometimes using the “royal we” and often using inappropriate terms of endearment like “young lady” or “young man.”
Just as keeping physically fit is important as we age, so is keeping mentally fit. More research is being done on how adults can work out their “mental muscles” to keep their minds sharp and possibly put off or avoid the onset Alzheimer’s and dementia.
1. Engage in physical exercise
Surprised that physical exercise tops the list? You shouldn’t be. Exercise is arguably the single most effective way to keep the mind sharp and the memory strong. Any type of physical exercise that gets the heart rate up is good for the brain as well as the body.
There are some life experiences that you just can’t understand until you have lived them yourself. For example nothing can truly prepare you for becoming a parent.
Read all the books you want and watch all your friends have their own kids—you will never really get it until you’re the one doing the 2 a.m. feeding or calling the pediatrician about how, exactly, one might safely extract a Lego from a child’s right nostril.
A similar you-can’t-understand-until-you’ve-been-there rule applies to the often poignant transition from being your parent’s child to being their caregiver.
After a loss, family is often tasked with the responsibility of handling the financial and legal matters associated with administering the estate of the deceased. While this in and of itself can be stressful and overwhelming, perhaps the more emotionally-draining ritual is sorting through personal belongings such as clothing, jewelry, and photos of a loved one.
One often overlooked personal item that must be removed when cleaning out after someone has died, are unused prescriptions and over-the-counter (OTC) medications.
What do you do with these now unneeded, but potentially dangerous, medications when your loved one is gone? How do you make sure they are safely disposed of and do not fall into the wrong hands?
Landing a new job is a daunting task when you’re in your 50s or 60s. The prospect of transitioning to a new company or perhaps rejoining the workforce after some time away can feel like having to reinvent yourself from the ground up.
It doesn’t help that, despite the passage of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in 1967, ageism is still very much a part of our professional landscape.
Workplace discrimination against someone on the basis of age can take many forms from being passed over for assignments and promotions to being excluded from key meetings to being denied training experiences. And—yes—it can also show up in the hiring process.
What’s the secret to happiness?
Not sure there are any secrets, but there appears to be a formula. By studying happy people, researchers have been able to find common traits and links between them. This is good news for us! It means we can take steps to actively increase our happiness. Who doesn’t want that?!
We can choose to age gracefully and happily by focusing on these six things:
Experts have been telling us for years that regular family dinners are one of the most effective ways for parents and children to reconnect and bond. Families who consistently sit down at the table together also reap many other benefits including healthier, smarter, more resilient kids.
But in many households—despite best intentions—the family dinner seems like an unattainable relic from another era—nice, but not likely to happen.
Maybe it’s time to set the bar a little lower, and focus on resurrecting another bygone tradition: the Sunday dinner.
Our need for sleep changes throughout our lifetimes, but maybe not as much as we once thought. Contrary to popular belief, adults 65 and older do not require less sleep than they did at 35 or 50. The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7-9 hours of sleep a night for adults of all ages.
Unfortunately, many adults over 65 do sleep less than the 7-9 recommended hours, which can be detrimental to overall health. Here’s what to know about sleep and how to improve sleeping habits.
What happens when you don’t sleep enough
Can you hear me now?
It’s an unkind stereotype—the aging person who is constantly saying, “Eh?” because they can’t hear what someone else is saying. While it might make for a funny bit on a TV show or in a movie, in real life, hearing loss is no joking matter. And of course, it’s not only older people who experience hearing loss, it can happen at any age.
Impaired hearing is not only inconvenient and a detriment to quality of life, it can also contribute to physical injury (the inner ear is critical to maintaining balance and avoiding falls) and depression (withdrawal from social situations due to embarrassment can lead to isolation).
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