“The Health of Our
Seniors”
We
live at a unique time when our life expectancy has increased because of the
many diseases that technology and science have been able to make immunizations
for and significantly reduce their impact on our society. We have baby boomers who are now in their
retirement age and older who still have many years of life to look forward
to. In doing this assignment I found that
their years may not be so full of life, but full of rehab and assisted living
homes. With the top 5 Health trends
affecting our Senior population being obesity,
heart disease, diabetes, arthritis/chronic
pain and dementia, can this
trend be reversed?
In
talking to Jamie Lloyd an LPN, who works a few days a week at a rehabilitation
center in Orem, Utah, the biggest health trend she sees in her facility is obesity. People come in to the facility, often after
an orthopedic surgery on a knee or hip, to recover and receive therapy and care
because they would be unable to take care of themselves at home. This is a great idea, but she says that the
main reason they can’t take care of themselves at home is because they are so
obese and out of shape that they lack the strength to care for themselves, and
often their spouse is too.
Another
health trend is heart disease, and
Jamie says that those that come to rehab with this condition usually stay twice
as long because their heart condition causes additional complications with
their recovery regardless of where they had their surgery.
I
spoke to Care Coordinator, Sissy Williams, who has worked at an assisted living
facility in Provo, Utah for the last 6 years, and she has definitely seen a
change in the health trends. Her first
observation was that when she first started working there, many of the patients
mainly took care of themselves and just needed assistance with medications and
such, but now they are very immobile and several have wheelchairs and have a
hard time getting themselves from their beds to the bathroom. They
have many patients who have diabetes,
which is often a result of being obese. Of
the 48 beds, 46 are filled and even though it is a level 1 care facility, Sissy
says that it should be a level 2 because the workers are doing so much for
these people, bathing, dressing, and cleaning etc.
Sissy
also commented how amazed she is in how things have changed with the
medications as well as they have been increased to give them comfort for their
pain of arthritis and overall chronic
pain. She says that their pain could
be substantially helped or alleviated by exercising and there is exercise
equipment at the facility but it is hardly ever used, because the patients say they
just don’t have the energy to exercise.
One
last area that Sissy has seen an increase of is dementia. I do not know all
the reasons behind dementia, but I do know that an active mind can lessen the
effects. When our seniors are put into
these assisted living facilities I wonder if they put their minds out to
pasture as well and avoid opportunities to further their learning and to
develop their talents and instead they give up.
So
is this what I have to look forward to?
It doesn’t seem very inviting to me.
Of all of these health trends all of them seem to be preventable simply
by the lifelong practice of healthy eating and exercise. Obesity, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Arthritis
and Chronic Pain, and Dementia can all be helped through exercise and eating a
healthy diet. This was a very
enlightening assignment and it has rekindled my desire to make health and
fitness a way of my life starting now.
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