Tips For Taking Care Of Yourself Or A Loved One Who Is A Senior

One thing you may have realized is that no matter what you do, time marches on.

Someday, we will all join the senior population. Remember, aging isn’t always bad and quite frankly the latter is less to be desired.
There can be challenges associated with growing older but they can be overcome with the right tools. We have compiled a list of things that will make your life easier as a senior or that you could recommend to the senior in your life.

Hire someone to do property maintenance and cleaning. If you are feeling healthy, we would encourage you to do your own basic home maintenance. Housework is a great source of exercise and some would venture further to say, good for the soul. However, if you are having health issues, there is nothing wrong with “farming out” some daily chores. You could cherry pick, with your least liked tasks and then the other tasks won’t seem so daunting.

Be proactive with avoidable illness. Preventative care visits, including health screenings for cholesterol levels, colon cancer, heart problems and more. Seniors also need to get vaccinations that can help prevent influenza, shingles and pneumonia.

Use technology to your advantage. Even if you are a self confessed techno phobe, we would encourage you to try a few things. For instance, there are a ton of great apps for the iPad and smart phones for seniors and most of them are very reasonably priced or free.

• Be My Eyes – Sometimes seeing things without much light can be difficult. This app not only illuminates magazines, newspapers, and restaurant menus, but also magnifies them. It’s a win-win all around!
• PillBoxie – Sometimes remembering to take medications can be tricky, especially if you take different medications on different days. The Pillboxie app allows you to make a customized pillbox and set reminders to help you take your pills at scheduled times. Link here.
• ibooks and kindle – By downloading this app on your smartphone, you can have access to thousands of books. The app is free but you still need to download the actual book. The app just allows you to read it on your phone. If you’re not sure you want to commit to the entire book, you can choose to download just a few pages. If you like the sample pages, then you can decide to download the whole thing.
• Clevermind – This app is created with the focus on people with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive impairment.It offers a treasure trove of quizzes, games, and brain-teasers for exercising one’s mind and special features to help navigation, like big buttons, voice command, robotic assistant MYIRA that can provide any information at a vocal request, and many others.
• Dragon Dication – This voice recognition app will turn anything you say into text. Now, you never have to type out messages again. Just way what you want to say, and the app will type it out for you. This is a good app for anyone who has arthritis in their hands and finds typing painful.

Keep up your nutrition. If you find it difficult to keep on top of groceries you can subscribe to a food service that delivers fresh produce and meats to your home. Even if you only use it a few times a week, making meals the other days won’t seem like such a chore. There are many different food delivery companies. You can have the food fully cooked, or all the grocery components but they still require a little preparation but much less than if you had to shop and make the whole meal yourself.

Subscribe to a car service like Uber or Lyft. Once you’ve added your profile, it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3 to get picked up wherever you are. These services are safe, clean and very affordable. When you add up the expense of a car payment, gas, parking fees and insurance, you may just be ahead of the game. There is a lot less stress when you don’t have to drive yourself or find parking. Hospitals, doctor offices and clinics are notorious for having terrible and expensive parking.

So go ahead, be proactive and use the tools around you. We want you to live your best life so please don’t hesitate to call on us to help make your life or the life of a loved one a little easier.

– The team at Transitions Rehabilitation And Health Care