Each minute, about six senior citizens is seen by an emergency room doctor following a fall. About four times an hour, elderly people die from injuries received during a fall. Those falls might happen tripping over an object on the floor or falling while trying to reach something on a high shelf. Some falls occur because balance isn’t what it used to be.

Do you notice your mom struggling to maintain her balance more than in the past? If so, she should work on strengthening muscles to help with balance. Talk to her doctor to make sure she’s able. If she is, here are four unique exercise programs that can help.

Aqua Pi Yo Chi

You’ll typically find Aqua Pi Yo Chi classesheld at your local YMCA. The program takes place in a heated pool and blends movements from Pilates, Tai Chi, and Yoga to help strengthen the core muscles. It also uses breathing exercises and meditation practices to help de-stress. It’s in the water, so there’s no stress on the joints, which is great if your mom is arthritic.

Bollywood Dance Therapy

Bollywood dancing can be an incredible workout. Look for dance therapy classes designed to be slower for those new to the dance. Some classes allow participants to sit down from time to time as needed. Bollywood dancing will help strengthen core muscles, work on balance skills, and help improve a person’s gait, too.

Qigong

Pronounced “chee-gung,” this Asian practice means, essentially, “breath skill.” Through gentle movements, stretches, meditation, and breathing exercises, it helps the body heal from within. While practicing deep breathing, the participant will sway, bounce, stretch, and move the body in set patterns that gently tone and stretch muscles. Breathing is incorporated throughout to help ease stress and tension.

Tai Cheng

Tai Cheng is a comprehensive form that takes Tai Chi and blends it to build core body strength, balance, mobility, and ease pain and stiffness. A comprehensive program usually includes a dietary guide to help improve nutrition and aid weight loss.

Have a home care agency do a safety check of your mom’s home. You may think you’ve done all you can to ease the fall risks in certain rooms, but a professional may find things you overlooked. Call a home care agency to talk about this and services caregivers offer that can keep your mom on her feet.

If you or an aging loved-one are considering Home Care Shallowater, TX, please contact the caring staff at Best In-Home Care (806) 412-0723.

The bathroom is still the most dangerous room in the house, especially for your aging family member. As her caregiver, you might be worried that keeping her safe in the bathroom is something that will be incredibly expensive and really complicated. But this doesn’t have to be a complicated process at all.

Use Common Sense

Your best tool in keeping your senior safe no matter where she is can be your own common sense. Think about what she may have told you about how she feels when she’s engaging in certain activities in the bathroom. Watch what your senior needs and how she moves in other rooms, too. From there, you can spot areas that aren’t working as well for her as you would like for them to work.

Keep Your Senior’s Limitations in Mind

It can also help to start with your senior’s limitations. If she has a difficult time standing from a seated position in the living room, she’s likely to have that same problem everywhere. Using a toilet raising kit to lift the height of the toilet can help her immensely. Her own challenges can help you to spot safety concerns.

Handrails Are Always a Good Solution

Regardless, some tools are always helpful. Handrails in particular fall into this category. Your elderly family member can use them to maintain her balance and they’re an excellent assistance tool if she feels she’s about to fall. Installing hand rails in the shower or tub stall as well as on other walls in the bathroom can help your senior to feel more secure overall.

Tubs and Shower Stalls Have More Solutions than You Think

Often caregivers look at shower stalls or tubs and worry that nothing short of a complete renovation will help their senior to be safer there. The reality is that there are a lot of tools that can help more than you might think. Transfer benches and shower chairs can help to make a tub or shower stall far safer and more accessible than you realize. Do some investigating before you worry that there’s nothing else that can be done.

Senior care providers might be the right answer for your senior’s situation. They can help her to deal with the everyday tasks that go on in the bathroom. But they can also help you to determine what changes might help your elderly family member to be more independent in the bathroom.

If you or an aging loved-one are considering Senior Care in Wolfforth, TX, please contact the caring staff at Best In-Home Care (806) 412-0723.

Cooking may be something that your elderly family member has done for a long time on her own. Whether she loves it or simply tolerates it, cooking might be getting more difficult for your senior to do easily on her own. Finding some ways to make cooking easier can make it more appealing and safer, to boot.

Prep Ingredients for Her

Whenever possible, try to prepare ingredients for your senior in advance. This is especially helpful if she has trouble holding a knife well or for longer periods of time. If time is a big issue for you, too, then consider buying ingredients pre-chopped. This can save a ton of time and effort and still make sure that your elderly family member is able to cook healthy meals.

Find Recipes for One-dish Meals

If your elderly family member is cooking recipes that involve lots of different cooking methods, utensils, or pots, then cooking is going to be more challenging for her. One way around this is for her to cook meals that are one-dish meals. Even slow cooker or pressure cooker meals make cooking fun and yet use a minimum of utensils. Using slow cooker liners inside the well can even help with cleanup later.

Choose Recipes that Reheat Well

Your elderly family member’s appetite might fluctuate a bit and she may occasionally cook more than she can eat. Freezing those meals in individual serving containers allows her to save meals for later. Be sure to help your senior look for meals that reheat well to make that even easier. If you do freeze them, make sure to label each container so there’s no doubt about what’s in it or how to reheat the food.

Hire Elder Care Providers to Help

Elder care providers can help immensely when your aging adult is having trouble in the kitchen. They can lend a helping hand or take over meal preparation for your senior, whichever she prefers. If your elderly family member really wants to do as much as possible on her own, they’re there to make sure that she’s as safe as possible.

Cooking can keep your elderly family member mentally and physically more active. It’s also an important way to make sure that she knows what she’s eating. For some aging adults, not knowing what’s in their food can contribute to paranoia about food, which is not something you want to happen.

If you or an aging loved-one are considering Elder Care in Slayton, TX, please contact the caring staff at Best In-Home Care (806) 412-0723.

A diagnosis of heart failure can make your senior worry that the end is far closer than she thought. But with the right changes to her lifestyle, she can maintain her health for a long time. The key is to make the right changes and to get those changes to stick.

Assess the Lifestyle Changes that Might Be Necessary

For so many people, heart failure is much more manageable with some lifestyle changes. This might involve helping her to change her diet, start an exercise program, and possibly quit smoking or other vices. These changes aren’t easy and they require formulating a plan to help your elderly family member to succeed.

Help Her Work out a System for Keeping Her Health in Check

The systems and routines that your elderly family member adopts now can help her to manage her heart failure more effectively. Work with her doctor to make sure that both of you understand how medications, dietary changes, and everything else all work together. From there you can fine tune some routines that prioritize her health.

Know What to Look for When She’s Having Trouble

Heart failure can cause some problems for your elderly family member if she’s overdoing it or if she’s experiencing a worsening of her symptoms. Make sure that you both know what it looks like when your elderly family member is having trouble. Her doctor can let you know what symptoms mean that she needs more rest and which symptoms mean that she needs medical intervention now.

Develop Some Solutions to Help Her Conserve Her Energy

At various times your senior may need to conserve her energy with normal daily tasks and chores so that she can focus on more important tasks, like keeping herself going. Hiring elderly care providers can give your senior that freedom. They can take over light housekeeping chores which lets your senior use her energy to go for a walk. They can also help her to focus on eating healthier foods at regular intervals, which can be a key part of succeeding with dietary changes.

You can help your elderly family member to be more comfortable and to prioritize her health, even after a frightening diagnosis like heart failure. Make sure that you understand how to help her to stay as healthy as possible and put plans in place to make all of those goals much easier for her to hit.

If you or an aging loved-one are considering Elderly Care in Slayton, TX, please contact the caring staff at Best In-Home Care (806) 412-0723.