A Useful Information Resource for Caregivers of Aging Parents

I read and review many publications to select those that are the most useful for both caregivers of aging parents and for professionals in the eldercare field.

One consistently useful and well designed E-newsletter is "Caring Right at Home". It's published by the Right At Home company, a network of non-medical home care franchises in the U.S.

This months issue has articles on the following subjects:
Communicating with a Hearing Impaired Love One
Home Safety Checklist for Alzheimer's Caregivers
Male Caregivers: How Family and Friends Can Help
Problems with Bathing Common among Older Adults, But Can Be Prevented with Early Intervention
Baby Boomers to Challenge and Change Tomorrow's Health Care System

You can subscribe to the free newsletter and receive your monthly copy in your e-mail box. It's a simple 4 line form.

If you would like to get your own subscription, click here. http://www.poststat.net/rahsubscribers/WCSubscribeRAH.asp

100 Year Olds: Nation's Fastest Growing Age Group

In an earlier blog post I noted that the fastest growing age group in our aging population are those over 85. Now comes the news that a subset of that group-Those who live to be 100, is growing at an amazing rate. in 1960 the US had about 3300 centenarians. Now there are over are nearly 80,000!

It is not just an American phenomenon. Worldwide, the population of centenarians will quintuple during the next 25 years, federal officials calculate.

While some experts in the field of aging see this as a positive trend, others warn that many will simply spend more years in poor health.

On the bright side, one expert predicts "They may be 104, but they'll be more like an 80-year-old today."

But other researchers, including S. Jay Olshanksy, see a limit to the gains, with life expectancy at birth perhaps reaching 90, about 12 years beyond the U.S. average.

He foresees two distinct groups of centenarians in a few decades, with one marked by baby boomers who lived a healthy lifestyle - not smoking, avoiding excessive drinking, exercising regularly and otherwise taking care of their bodies.

They'll live "unusually vibrant lives" past 100, said Olshansky, an expert in epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

But there also will be a "dramatic increase" in the population of frail centenarians who, without medical advances, would otherwise have died in their 80s and 90s. Technology will push their survival into uncharted regions.

"They'll be more frail or disabled for longer periods," Olshanksy said. "Many of these people will be living on manufactured time."

For the full article click on this link http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBBR22Y26F.html