Home care services allow seniors to receive needed assistance with daily tasks at a much lower cost than nursing homes or assisted living facilities. In many cases, the costs of medications and needed continuous treatment such as oxygen may also be lower when given at home as opposed to provided by a nursing facility. Patients also benefit from enjoying the comforts of home instead of moving into a facility that is unfamiliar and restricting.

Michael J. Costigan knows firsthand what individuals with dementia and the families that love them deal with when trying to provide comfort and care throughout the difficult process. It was his own experience caring for a loved one with a common form of the degenerative disease which inspired him to open his ComForcare location in Burlington, New Jersey nearly a decade ago.  

Retirement? Overrated!

The other night on popular entertainment show E! News, Kendall Jenner, the spawn of Kris Kardashian Jenner and her long suffering husband Bruce, graced viewers with a quote that would make Noah Webster see red:

Retirement, for most people, is a dream come true. You finally have the time to do all of the things you wanted to do, such as explore new hobbies or even travel the world if you so choose. Yet, sometimes all that free time can get a little overwhelming.

Most of us spend our entire lives working and wishing we had more free time. Then retirement comes and it’s surprisingly difficult to keep busy. However, there are many options for occupying your time and supporting healthy aging, including going back to school.

Technology is in every part of our lives these days. Whether it’s recording your favorite TV show while you’re at dinner or using your phone to set your alarm in the morning, the great achievements in technology have made our both our personal lives and professional lives better, including the role of caregiver.

While a caregiver’s job is never easy, there have been a few technological advances to make things go a little smoother. There are several mobile phone applications available that can help remind caregivers when the ones they are caring for need to take their medication. One such app – Med Helper, can track not only the pill schedule, but also doctor’s appointments, prescriptions and even the correct dosage of each medication. A similar program is the Caregiver’s Touch, an app that not only has a mobile version, but a web version as well. Not only can you track medications, you can also store insurance information and emergency contacts.

About 66 million adult Americans perform an average of 19 hours a week of caregiving duties for loved ones. Add that to a fulltime job and a family, and you have about 30 percent of adults who miss an average of seven days of work a year to help with caregiving responsibilities. Before getting worn out or frustrated, consider these points to manage your caregiving responsibilities.

People of every age share a handful of basic needs. Among them are food, water, shelter and feeling loved. A recent report in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed the effects of loneliness, described as a lack of meaningful contact with others that leads to painful distress, on adults over 60. Over six years, 24.8 percent of lonely older adults in the study lost some ability to perform daily living tasks, like bathing, eating and dressing. These seniors were also 45 percent more likely to die than other people their age who felt they had meaningful connections in their lives.